


hey, I'm Gen, and this is the bitch with the arm,

by sntoot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Carter is also Alive, Gen, OC, Post Samaritan, Root is Alive, Teenage Drama, also root and shaw are kind of terrible at parenting but thankfully thats not their job here, bc im a huge baby and love their characters, harold is a good dad, there is a cat and shes really cute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-08-02 17:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16309526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sntoot/pseuds/sntoot
Summary: y'all ever wonder what would've happened if Samaritan actually decided to make its very own analogue interface with,, a more permanent connection shall we say? yeah, me too, except thankfully the Machine managed to get her dirty paws all over the prototype.anyways, this is the adventures of Gen and that prototype.





	1. (Prologue) School is Hard When You Have a Migraine 24/7 Ok?

**Author's Note:**

> ok, I know the description of the ep with Gen says she's like 10, but the first time I saw it I totally thought she was 11 or 12, basically same age as the Machine, and that's what I thought until I was already deep into making this, and then when I finally looked at the episode description and i was like, whoops?  
> so anyways pretend Gen was 12ish then instead, so the ages make sense, cool, thanks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also this is before post-samaritan by a bit, which is why I called it the prologue,  
> basically Samaritan's still watching and that's why Skye's shuffled away to boarding school until they can get rid of Samaritan

“Hey, kid,” a very familiar voice said from the doorway to her dorm room. Gen looked up excitedly to see Shaw leaning against her doorframe. She seemed different, more tired, but at least she was there.

“Hey, Shaw,” Gen said, hopping off her bed to give her a hug. It was a little weird, now that Gen was taller than her, but Shaw didn’t reject the contact, patting her back until she let go. “What took so long?”

Shaw didn’t respond, her expression shifting for a second to be even more exhausted before she covered it up. Something really must have happened to her to have kept her from visiting.

“Anyways, sorry ‘bout this,” Shaw said, not sounding very sorry at all. But she nudged Gen out of the doorway, and in came mystery man Harold with the dog and a girl who seemed a bit younger than herself.

“You’re why I’m getting a new roommate?” Gen asked, watching the dog jump onto the empty bed at Harold’s gesture, successfully getting out of the way of the duffel bag the girl dropped and shoved under the bed.

“You’ve got a... fuck, I dunno what to call it. You’re both wards of a certain reclusive billionaire. The school was nice enough to put you guys together since you apparently needed a new roommate anyways,” Shaw said, giving Gen a look. “What’d you do to your last roommate anyways?”

“Look, she started it,” Gen said defensively. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Shaw looked impressed, and didn’t push any further.

“Ms. Shaw, if you could get the toolbox?” Harold said, and Shaw disappeared out the door. Gen stared at the little red chest of drawers she brought back, wondering why on earth this mystery kid needed a whole toolbox, yet no suitcase.

The new girl sat down on the bed with the dog, scratching behind the dog’s ears as he sniffed at her. She didn’t look very threatening, her features still round and soft like a child’s despite how old she must have been to be in Gen’s year. Her hair was light brown, though definitely darker than Gen’s own, and curly where it escaped her ponytail.

And her left sweatshirt sleeve was tied in a knot midway down, the end of the sleeve shoved into the pocket. She was missing an arm.

“I owe you a milkshake,” Shaw told her, interrupting her thoughts, “but I’m gonna have to call a rain check. At least until it’s safer to be seen.”

“There is something different,” Gen said victoriously, her suspicions proven. “I thought so; everything seemed just slightly off—”

“Don’t dig into it, kid,” Shaw told her, voice low but urgent.

Gen nodded, a little nervous at how keen Shaw was about the topic. If Shaw had audible feelings on the subject, that meant it was dangerous. “Next time then,” Gen said. “For the milkshakes.”

Shaw gave her a nod. Gen glanced at the other girl again. She was listening to Harold as he spoke to her, sitting on the bed on the other side of the dog.

“You know we won’t be able to be in contact the way we have been,” Harold told her, petting the dog. “You’re outside of the city. But if you have an emergency, don’t hesitate to call.”

The girl nodded, leaning over to hug the dog. Harold smoothed her hair back, and Gen wondered if they were actually related. She hadn’t gotten that much attention from any of them when they’d left her here.

“We’ll be back soon,” Harold said, quieter.

The girl nodded again, letting go of the dog and sitting up. Harold got up off the bed, and the dog followed him as he went to the door.

Shaw approached the girl, and mussed up her hair. “See you around, Skye,” she said simply.

Skye nodded, watching her leave the room blankly. For as much attention as they were giving her, she hardly seemed like she needed it.

“I’m Gen,” Gen said, trying to break the silence that had descended with the click of the shut door. “Shaw saved me a few years ago.”

“You can call me Skye,” the girl responded flatly, barely glancing at her as she laid back on the bed.

“Well, um, I can help you get acquainted with everything here,” Gen said. “Seems fair, since Shaw won’t let me try to pay her back.”

Skye didn’t respond, closing her eyes.

Perhaps she was more affected by being left behind than Gen had thought.

\--- 

It took one day for her to get into a fight. Not even a full day of classes really. Gen had taken Skye to the cafeteria, and it had been going fairly smoothly until the table of rude boys tried to talk to her. Gen usually ignored them, or found a different way around their table, but today they had managed to grab the table front and center to the exit of the food line, and they were looking for fresh meat.

Skye could barely hold the whole tray of food with just one arm, but she’d managed to finagle it onto her arm herself. Gen was already planning to help her put it down on the table to keep her from spilling anything.

“Come sit with us, new girl,” one of the boys said. “Don’t bother with little miss spy.”

Skye looked at them, meeting their gazes with a neutral expression as she examined them. And then she turned away and continued to follow Gen to another table.

Unfortunately, one of the boys got up and followed them.

“You haven’t heard about her yet since you’re new,” the boy said. “But she’s a real nutjob.”

“Sounds like you’re the freak,” Skye said easily, not even bothering to look at him. “Trying to tell me who I can and can’t associate with.” She started to set her tray down at the table beside Gen, and Gen took it from her, letting her get her arm out from under it before she set it down. Skye gave her a nod in thanks.

“What?” the boy sputtered, still standing behind their chairs.

Skye continued to ignore him, putting her bag down beside the chair and pulling the stuffed cat out of it to sit on her lap. Gen still couldn’t figure that out. The girl talked like an adult, yet carried around a stuffed animal like a child. The only thing Gen could assume was that it was a comfort object to combat a trauma.

And the boy grabbed it right off her lap. As far as Gen was concerned, he got exactly what was coming to him.

The bully couldn’t even speak before Skye punched him in the stomach. He doubled over, and Skye continued with her onslaught, slamming the boy’s head into her knee, and when he straightened up to grab his nose, she swung her shin hard in between his legs, and he was down on the ground.

Neatly, Skye grabbed the stuffed cat out of his hand, and she sat back down, shoving the cat into her sweater before starting to eat like nothing had happened. That was when Gen decided she liked her.

Of course, within a couple of seconds teachers came running and the two of them were taken to the principal’s office, but Gen had already decided she was going to have a grand time with this girl.

\--- 

Skye was gone, somewhere else on campus, when Gen got back to the dorm room. Gen wouldn’t admit to herself that she was a little disappointed; she wanted to observe Skye more. While Skye was a rather, subpar student, she was definitely much smarter than she let on, and she was putting together something electronic and a little mysterious on her desk.

Gen turned her attention to what she could investigate then, since Skye didn’t appear to be coming back any time soon. The only personal belonging Skye had left in the room was a tool chest, not including clothing that all appeared to be hand-me downs from Shaw, or at least in imitation of her style. Gen had already tried to go through it, but it was locked. She could’ve jimmied it, or just yanked it open, but she didn’t want to leave any sort of trace on the cheap lock.

So instead, she sat next to it, back against the desk and trying to figure out her next step. She wasn’t going to be out-foxed by a simple lock, that was for sure. Gen had easily gotten any dirt she needed on her classmates, why was this girl so much more difficult?

But they had social lives to observe. Not mentioning the dog, Skye’s social life so far had consisted of Harold, the most mysterious man Gen had ever met, and Shaw, who wasn’t the type to even be a friend in the first place, much less rat out on them. Skye hadn’t bothered to talk to anyone else at the school if she didn’t have to, excluding Gen.

“It’s just tools,” Skye said, standing in the doorway. Her hand was shoved deep in her pocket, backpack on her shoulder.

Gen flinched, scrambling to her feet and dusting herself off. “I wasn’t looking,” she said hurriedly.

“It wouldn’t really matter if you did,” Skye told her, expression flat. “Like I said, it’s just tools.”

Gen stepped away from the toolbox as Skye approached, pulling a necklace with a few keys on it out from under her shirt and over her head. She used one to unlock the chest, appearing perfectly comfortable with the fact she only had one arm to work with.

“Just tools,” Skye said, turning to show Gen what was in the top of the chest. It really was just tools, that part of the toolbox full of different measuring tools and scraps of metal and wire it looked like. But the inside of the lid held something interesting. There were childish drawings taped to it, although they were almost covered by pictures of real birds, and one of two people. When Gen stepped closer, she realized it was Harold, and a much younger Skye, appearing to be wearing a cat themed onesie and still missing her left arm, grinning beside him as she held his hand.

And unlike any other teenager Gen had met, Skye seemed perfectly at ease with these obvious links to her childhood.

“Um, thanks,” Gen said awkwardly. “For showing me.”

Skye shrugged. “If it keeps you from breaking the lock.”

\---

“Did you see any nice birds today?” Skye asked, cell phone to her ear. She was sitting beside the railing on the roof, in Gen’s favorite spot to go when she needed time alone to Gen’s slight frustration.

It was really her own fault, Gen had shown her the spot on the roof of the dorm building when she’d shown her around the school, and told her if she needed time alone, no one else came up here. But it was still annoying.

Sighing, Gen went to the other side of the roof, looking out at the parking lot and the sports fields instead of the rather picturesque grass that led down to the lake.

“I saw a swan,” Skye said, her voice almost too quiet to fully discern from where Gen was standing. “On the lake. Gen told me they’re mean though.”

On one hand, Gen should probably respect Skye’s privacy and not listen in to her conversation. But since when had that ever stopped her from eavesdropping? Gen glanced around the roof, trying to find a better spot to listen without letting Skye know she was there or trying to listen.

“The pigeons here aren’t the same. They scare easy and also the teachers don’t let me feed them. They say they’re pests. ‘Rats with wings.’ So I have to find somewhere else to feed them.”

Gen settled on leaning against the railing a little ways away from Skye and just pretending she couldn’t hear her. It usually worked.

Skye glanced at her, her expression telling Gen her little ruse hadn’t fooled her in the least. But Skye didn’t move further away, nor did she call Gen on it.

“I want to come home,” Skye said quietly, leaning her head against the railing support. “When can I come home?”

She closed her eyes at whatever response she was getting, appearing to already know the answer she was getting and not liking it.

“Yeah,” Skye said. “I guess... I’ll try to take some pictures of the pigeons to send you. They might not be very good since I only have one hand.”

Whoever she was talking to her kept talking for a bit, and Gen stared out at the lake, watching the swans terrorize whoever had gone too close to their territory this time. Maybe sometime she should hunt down where Skye was sneaking off to feed the birds; it would probably give her more clues into who Skye was.

 

A few days later, Gen found her sitting behind the tennis courts and scattering seed she must have gotten from the nearby town, since nowhere in the school would they have that sort of thing. The pigeons loved it, not even squabbling with each other to get to the seed there was so much scattered, and Skye had her phone out, holding it on her knees as she tried to take pictures.

Gen sat down next to Skye on the bench, wondering how she could even start a conversation with her.

“They’re not pests,” Skye said. “I mean, they can be. But it’s the same as feral cats and dogs. Humans left them here.”

“Really?” Gen really didn’t know much about pigeons, other than they tended to leave messes where flocks of them hung out.

“Humans used to use them to send messages. All the time. But then technology advanced, and the people forgot about them. They’re not a native species.”

That made sense. Gen had just never thought about it before. “Why are you feeding them then?” Gen asked. “If they’re an invasive species shouldn’t we get rid of them?”

Skye shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted them to know kindness, since no one else here likes them.”

Gen snorted. “Funny, coming from the girl who will fight anyone who asks for it.”

“Those kids already know kindness, too much kindness. They don’t deserve mine.” Skye spread out some more seed, the birds starting to squabble with each other.

That was one way to put it. And Gen couldn’t argue with that.

\--- 

Gen found Skye in their room with all the missing towels the other girls on their floor were complaining about, blood down her side and metal in her shoulder. Gen had never seen her shoulder bare before, but it looked like attaching whatever the metal thing was had done the damage.

“You gonna tell,” Skye asked, voice fairly even considering the amount of blood she had to have lost.

“No,” Gen told her, hurriedly kneeling down to wrap one of the towels around her shoulder. Her hands were shaking, but all she needed to do was tie the towel tight around the wound, right?

Skye shut her eyes, wincing as Gen put pressure on her shoulder to tie the towel as tightly as she could.

“You gonna tell me what this is,” Gen asked, trying to match Skye’s neutral tone.

“’M making a new arm. Old one failed,” Skye told her. “Attachment’s a bit bloody.”

“And permanent,” Gen said, using another towel to try and wipe the blood off Skye’s side.

“No, not permanent,” Skye said. “But no fun to get off.”

Gen made a face, putting down the stained towel. “I don’t need to think about that.”

Skye looked at her, her gaze a little foggy probably from pain, but she seemed clearheaded enough. “Were you worried?”

“Yeah,” Gen said, disturbed that Skye hadn’t realized. “My friend’s sitting on the floor, bloody, wouldn’t you be worried?”

Skye stared at her blankly.

“Never mind. I guess we’re not friends,” Gen said, standing up.

Skye looked confused, and then her head tipped back onto the bed behind her as she passed out, to Gen’s complete surprise. She really shouldn’t have been surprised, but Skye had seemed so cogent that she hadn’t even thought to consider the fact she could pass out due to blood loss.

\---

“Okay,” Gen said, trying to understand what Skye had already told her. “But it’s like... just over half-way through the semester. Wait, you haven’t even been here for half a semester—”

“What’s it matter,” Skye said, putting her clothes back into the duffel bag she’d come with. “It’s not like they’re teaching me anything here.”

“It’s not like you’re trying to learn either,” Gen said, getting a little frustrated at Skye’s attitude. “You have to put effort in to get rewarded.”

“You misunderstand,” Skye said, pausing her packing to look at Gen. “I already know what they’re trying to tell me. I was only here because I couldn’t stay with Harold without raising suspicion. The threat’s gone now so I can go home.”

“What threat?” Gen asked, crossing her arms. Talking to Skye only got more frustrating as time went on apparently.

Skye shrugged, and started putting clothes in her bag again. She really didn’t have much, since the bag was barely full by the time she finished, and she pulled the strap on over her head. Her toolbox had already been put in a box a few days ago, taken away to be shipped somewhere.

“See you around,” she said, sounding a lot like Shaw actually, and she left.


	2. in which Gen is a Stalker and John Gets a Cat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright, here we go, real time post-samaritan

Gen followed Shaw into the apartment, shoving her hands in her pockets as she looked over the nice furniture and the fact it was spacious. It was definitely an expensive place, but that wasn’t too surprising if Shaw still worked with Harold. The decor just didn’t quite seem to fit though, not if she was supposed to believe this was Shaw’s place. She’d seen Shaw’s old place; it was like a disaster zone of mismatched furniture and things that shouldn’t be used as furniture. This place had lots of purples, and it seemed almost like the furniture, although still clearly picked for use, had been planned to go together. Or at the very least, attempted to be matched.

“When you’re done tossin’ your stuff in your room, we can go grab milkshakes or somethin’,” Shaw said, shrugging the duffel bag off her shoulder to pass it to her. “Uh, your room’s the one with the bunk bed.”

When Gen just stared at her, she made a face, but continued to explain. “It’s Root’s solution when I said she couldn’t use your bed.”

“So I have to share my room,” Gen said, not bothering to hide her annoyance. She’d had to share a room for the past few years and looking forward to having her own space for a while.

“Yeah. Kinda. Skye’s not always here, but Root said if I could keep a bed open for you, she could keep one for Skye.”

Gen cheered up at that; hopefully she could spend her whole break not having to see Skye. Or if she did, she could get her to quit staying over.

“Anyways, put your stuff away,” Shaw said, nudging her. “I’m hungry.”

 

“—and I don’t think he agreed with me, but...” Gen could see a familiar figure approaching. “Anyways, we’re gonna have company.”

Swirling her melting remains of a shake with her straw, Gen watched Root slide into the booth beside Shaw and completely ignore any law of personal space as she practically sat on Shaw. She hadn’t interacted much with Root beyond the one time she’d been introduced by accident, but just from that interaction, she knew Root took what she wanted. And apparently that included Shaw’s personal space.

But Shaw seemed completely unbothered by the contact, letting Root get all over her as she drank her shake nonchalantly. So they were sleeping together then.

“Don’t take too long,” a familiar voice said flatly. “Or I’ll go without you.”

Gen looked up at the newcomer, a girl who looked about her own age who had her hands deep in her hoodie pockets as she stood beside the table. Skye. Somehow, she looked older than when Gen had last seen her a month ago, her face having lost some of its roundness as well as its childishness.

She was staring up through the window by the booth, but she didn’t quite seem to be looking at anything outside.

“Long time no see,” Gen tried, getting Skye to glance at her.

“It wasn’t your fault. I’m not good at school,” Skye told her without prompting.

Gen stared at her, surprised to be told something that sounded like it should’ve been confidential. But Skye looked like she had fallen back into being spaced out, looking out the window blankly again.

“I know you heard me; we’re going to be late,” Skye said, suddenly looking at Root. And then she turned and left, walking purposefully towards the intersection.

Root wiggled her eyebrows at Shaw, sipping at Shaw’s milkshake. “Duty calls,” she said, and slid out of the booth almost as easily as she got in.

“Later,” Shaw said, wiping off her straw.

Gen watched Root catch up to Skye, and then scrutinized them for as long as she could before they disappeared into the city. Skye was strange, and Gen wanted to know why.

“You want to follow them?” Shaw asked. “I don’t have anything else planned for today.”

 

Once Harold left, Skye looked up at the screens along the buildings in Times Square, still stopped just out of the way of the people trying to make their way through the tourist congested area. Her expression was carefully neutral, like she was observing the remains of something she had no particular attachments to. It was jarring, the contrast of her expression to the tourists.

And then she turned away from it all and met Gen’s gaze like she knew she had been there the whole time; for a second her eyes were like a window into the bitterness her face didn’t show, and then they flattened like her expression as Gen ducked away from the stare, caught in the act of following them.

“Yeah, I know,” Shaw said, most likely talking into her earpiece since her hand was by her ear. She tugged her baseball cap down, still keeping an eye on either Root or Skye. “This was fun though, right kid?”

“I guess,” Gen replied, not really liking the feeling of being out-foxed. Skye or Root hadn’t seen either of them on the way over, there was no way Skye could have known she was there.

“Hm, don’t feel bad,” Shaw told her, patting her shoulder a little too hard. “They cheat.”

“How?” Gen asked, crossing her arms. “There were no windows to see us in. They never checked their tails.”

“Yeah, like I said, they cheat.”

Gen grumbled to herself, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “I think you owe me another milkshake for not warning me.”

“Fair,” Shaw replied. “You want it now or later.”

“Later.”

“I guess we know what dinner is.”

\---

Gen had been following her for the past five blocks; she needed to find a better hobby, if Skye was going to finish hunting down bits of Samaritan infected tech without getting Gen hurt. Maybe she could find a job for her.

No, Shaw wouldn’t like that. She said to keep Gen safe when Skye had complained about her tail.

Skye watched Gen scroll through a feed on her phone, a good context for not moving, but she was distracted. Her feed was scrolling too slow for her to be fully paying attention to her surroundings.

Turning back the way she had come, Skye stalked over to Gen and leaned against the wall of the building beside her.

Gen glanced up, and then jumped as she realized who had appeared.

“What are you doing,” Skye asked, crossing her arms.

“What, I’m not allowed to walk here?” Gen replied.

Skye stared at her. “Yes, if you’re following me.”

“Why are you like this?” Gen asked, waving her hand in front of Skye’s face.

Skye narrowed her eyes, watching Gen around her hand. “Like what?”

“Like... Like Shaw—” Gen realized what she was saying as she said it. “You, you’re like Shaw, aren’t you?”

Skye tilted her head ever so slightly, a smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. Gen was sharp; it was a waste to not use her. Maybe she could find a use for her that wouldn’t go against Shaw’s order.

 

“So what are you looking for,” Gen asked, scooting her chair around the table to try and see what Skye was looking at.

“Nothing,” Skye told her, taking a sip of her drink.

“You expect me to believe this is some sort of coffee date?” Gen asked, trying to follow the line of Skye’s sight. Skye turned to look at her, ruining the effect. “You didn’t even get coffee.”

“Can’t. It messes up my arm.”

“Caffeine messes up your arm,” Gen said, nonbelieving.

“Giving myself an elevated heartrate before more exertion would probably make the entry points bleed.”

“You just don’t like what caffeine does to your system,” Gen said, sitting back in her chair.

To her surprise, Skye snorted. “Yes.” This version of Skye was so different from the one at school, so much less defensive and seeming like the weight of the world had been forced on her shoulders in the absence of Harold and Shaw.

“So next time, don’t take me to coffee for a date,” Gen told her.

Skye looked back at the building across the street, watching a business man leave. Gen couldn’t figure out anything strange about him. “Who said there’d be a next time?”

Gen glanced at her in surprise. “I do. Since this one kinda sucks. Look, if you’re waiting for someone to leave, wouldn’t it just be easier to go in and pretend to be lost looking for your parent?”

Skye didn’t look away from the street. “They would be able to identify me then. If I was waiting for someone in the first place.”

“Okay, then I’ll do it—”

Skye grabbed her hand before she could move, and turned to look her in the eye. “You ever kissed somebody?”

“Wh-what? Yeah,” Gen replied, “but what’s that got to do with anything—”

“Good, that’ll make this less awkward,” Skye said, and she leaned over and pressed her lips to Gen’s.

Gen could feel her face heat; she’d already known that liking girls versus boys usually felt different, but she hadn’t realized that kissing them would also be different.

Her face must have said something akin to what she was thinking, because Skye smirked at her before glancing across the street again.

“It’s not who’s leaving,” Skye told her, her hand shifting down from Gen’s wrist to her hand. “Look again.”

Gen did, looking over the people near the entrance of the office. There was only one man just standing there, like he was waiting on someone. Skye slid her fingers between Gen’s, making Gen glance back to her. She looked content, playing with Gen’s fingers. Gen had never seen her content before. At school the closest she had been was neutral, empty. Her face seemed softer like this, less harsh and intimidating.

“Is he still there?” Skye asked, glancing up at her, only to realize Gen had been looking at her instead. Her eyebrows came together for the split second before she glanced across the street again.

“Sorry,” Gen said. “I got distracted.” A quick glance of her own told her the guy was still there at least.

Skye didn’t respond, clearly thinking about something as she stared at the table. She made the same face Shaw did when she was thinking.

“Let’s go,” Skye finally said, letting go of Gen’s hand as she stood up. “He’s not going to move until we prove we’re not watching. Which is, frankly, ridiculous because what are two teenagers going to do to him.”

“If I remember right you’re pretty deadly with your hand,” Gen said, belatedly correcting herself. “Hands.”

Skye shook her head, but Gen could see her slight smile. Gen took her hand again, catching it as they started to walk away from the café; it was her prosthetic hand this time, covered with a glove, and it was about as cold as the air around them. Skye glanced at her in surprise as soon as Gen touched her palm, but she didn’t let go.

“So, next time, take me to the park or something,” Gen said. “With Bear.”

“Alright, I’ll just backtrack a block to pick you up,” Skye replied wryly.

\---

Gen threw her bag at the desk in her room, satisfied with its solid thud against the floor.

There was a grunt from the bunkbed, and then a thud of its own as a figure tangled up with blankets fell onto the wider bottom bunk.

“Skye?” Gen asked, watching her struggle to detangle herself from the sheet wrapped around her. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Skye grunted, finally freeing one end of the blanket to pull it away from herself. If Gen had been looking, she would have recognized the prosthetic arm on the desk as an indicator Skye was in there. “Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to start sleeping with the arm on so I can actually catch myself.”

“Uh, no, that was, I didn’t realize you were here,” Gen said hurriedly. “Why don’t you just take the bottom bunk if I’m not around?”

Skye made a face. “Sounds rude. What if you come back and want to use it?”

“Oh, um, good point. But also, it’s big enough to fit both of us.”

Skye shrugged. “Still doesn’t seem right. Why’d you throw your bag anyways?”

“I was kinda mad,” Gen said. “ _Am_ mad. I’m still mad.”

“Why?”

Gen made a face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Skye didn’t seem affected by that, her expression unchanging as she got off the bed. She threw the sheet back up to the top bunk and then hoisted herself back up there, having to do it all one handed.

Gen debated going back into the living room of the apartment, but Shaw was out there. She would probably ask more questions than Skye, since Skye seemed to want to go back to sleep. Gen flopped onto her own bed with a sigh, staring at the ceiling.

Skye peeked over the edge of the top bunk, holding something in her hand.

“What?” Gen asked, willing to start a fight with her if she was going to just stare.

Skye dropped whatever was in her hand, and it hit Gen’s midsection with a rather soft thump. It was Skye’s stuffed cat. By the time Gen looked back up at her she was gone; from the sound of it, she was rearranging some of the blankets up there.

“... Thanks,” Gen said, petting the plush.

 

“Are you still mad,” Skye asked, startling Gen as she sat down on the park bench next to her. She had Bear with her, and he sat down by her legs, panting as he watched the park go by.

“Yes,” Gen told her, annoyed with how easily it seemed for her to catch her tailing her. “And don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“I thought you knew where I was,” Skye said honestly. “Sorry.”

“Can’t you just let me believe that you don’t know I’m there at least once?” Gen said, crossing her arms.

“But I like sitting with you,” Skye replied.

When Gen didn’t reply, she continued. “I’ll go play fetch with Bear if you don’t want me here.”

Gen shoved her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, looking at the rest of the park instead of Skye. Skye got the message, and Gen felt her get up.

“Hey, guess what I’ve got for you,” Skye said to Bear, and Gen glanced at her as she walked over to the grass with the dog. “You’re never gonna believe it.” Bear stared up at Skye, his tail already wagging just from her tone as she unclipped his leash. Once she put the leash in the pouch of her sweatshirt, she pulled out a tennis ball, and Bear practically jumped for joy at seeing it, bouncing around Skye.

“Yeah, I got you a new ball,” Skye told him, holding it with her prosthetic hand a she scratched behind his ears. Bear clearly wanted the ball though, so Skye straightened up and tossed it, leaving Bear to shoot off after it.

Okay, she couldn’t help herself. She got off the bench and went to stand beside Skye just as Bear brought the ball back. “Did you really just come here to play with him,” Gen asked, watching where Skye threw the ball for Bear.

Skye shrugged, almost smiling at Gen. “Why, seeing someone suspicious?”

“Do you ever give a straight answer about these things?” Gen asked, Bear already sprinting back to them.

“Can’t. I’m too gay,” Skye replied easily, having to wrestle the ball out of Bear’s mouth to be able to throw it again. “It would be a betrayal to myself to give a straight answer.”

Gen rolled her eyes, making sure Skye was looking at her to see it.

“If you’re still mad, you should toss the ball some,” Skye said, kneeling down to play tug of war with Bear to get the ball from him. “Always helps me get over it.”

“I don’t want to get over it,” Gen replied, bristling. “I’m not done being mad at him yet.”

Skye stared at her. “What’d he do?” she asked, pausing before she could throw the ball again. “I mean, so I don’t do it.” Bear nibbled at her hand, tugging at the ball, and she belatedly threw it for him.

“Nah, you can’t do it,” Gen said, crossing her arms.

Skye glanced down at herself. “Is it a parts thing? What did he _do?”_

“No,” Gen said, almost laughing she was so caught off guard by Skye’s reaction. “No, you can’t do it because you don’t care about the same stuff as him.” Bear laid down when he came back this time, chewing on the ball between pants. Skye took her little backpack off, pulling out a bowl and a water bottle. She filled the bowl with the water, putting it down beside Bear, and then stood back up, replacing the backpack on her back.

When she was done, she looked at Gen, her expression something between confused and relieved.

“He, he’s really nice, okay? But he planned our first date this break to perfectly coincide with when the popular kids were meeting up and tried to get me to convince them I was worth something.”

Skye stayed silent, processing her words. “That doesn’t sound very nice,” she finally said.

Gen looked away from her, biting her lip. She had been ready to defend David out of habit. Maybe those thoughts she’d assumed were just because she was angry were right. David wasn’t worth her time if he relied on other people to define his social status. No, she shouldn’t decide these things while she was still determined to be mad.

“You wanna throw the ball?” Skye asked, and Gen glanced back at her, surprised to see her with the slobbery ball again. Bear was back on his feet, tail wagging.

“Yeah.” Ignoring the dog spit, Gen took the tennis ball and threw it as hard as she could.

“So, is there really someone you’re following here?” Gen asked, wiping her hand on her jeans.

“Nah. I just thought you looked like you could use some fetch,” Skye said simply, pulling the spit coated glove off her prosthetic hand so that it was inside out before sticking it in her pocket. The hand was a shiny metal, the segments thin and rather reminiscent of bones, and the underside of it was covered in what looked to be like a fabric that had to be pressure sensors from the wires coming out of them. It seemed very rudimentary compared to the tech that had to be out there for prosthetics, but Skye seemed to like it, since she made it. That was what Gen liked about her, how she did things her own way.

“So, there’s this stray cat,” Skye said, interrupting her thoughts, “on the way home. I was thinking we should catch it and give it to John.”

Gen laughed, almost forgetting to take the ball back from Bear until he nudged it into her hand. “Wait, for real?”

“He keeps complaining of boredom,” Skye said, looking honest to god thoughtful. “I thought it would prove to be a project for him. At the very least, it would get the cat off the street since he won’t put it back there.”

Gen shook her head. “Oh, he’s gonna hate it; we have to do it. What’s the cat look like?”

 

“How ‘bout, Meow in the Suit,” Skye said, the tortoiseshell cat held against her chest with her prosthetic arm. It looked like a mix of a tuxedo cat and a calico, the white markings making the darker fur look like a tuxedo. “You know, like Man in the Suit.” Apparently Skye had already befriended the cat, because she had run right up to her when she approached her territory. She hadn’t been totally okay with getting picked up, but as soon as Skye started feeding her treats she relaxed.

Gen laughed. “I dunno. I think we should get her a lil tie and vest like Harold and name her after him.” She had Bear’s leash, giving Skye both hands to deal with the cat. “Maybe it’ll help John warm up to him faster.”

Skye gasped. “The mewchine,” she said, holding the cat up to look at it in the eyes. “... No, you’re right that doesn’t quite fit. I do like Harold the cat though. She looks like she could be a Harold.”

“The mewchine?” Gen asked. “Like, machine?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Skye stayed silent, answering her with a shrug. “There’s a pet store around the corner if we want to look for a collar and stuff,” she said. “I think she’d look real pretty with a lil vest and bowtie.”

Gen ignored the lack of comment about the machine, filing it away to keep an eye out for later. If it did ever come up again, then she would know if it was important or not. “Let’s see what we can scrounge up.”

 

“Root,” John said accusatorially as soon as he entered the safe house, “why did you leave me a cat?” Skye noted that he was holding Harold the cat quite close to his chest, and that the cat seemed quite okay being held by him.

“I didn’t leave you a cat,” Root said, staring at the cat with its little bowtie. She was sitting in between Harold and Shaw at the big kitchen table, occasionally watching what Harold was doing before getting distracted by Shaw. Skye was keeping an eye on them from her spot on the couch. “Where did you get that?”

“It was in my apartment,” John replied. “Which means one of you left it there. Along with a note that said her name was Harold.”

“Maybe it was Detective Fusco,” Harold said, not looking away from his laptop screen. “Seems like his sense of humor.”

“He doesn’t pick locks.”

“Not with that attitude,” Shaw replied, mouth full of food.

“So you left it,” John said to Shaw, putting the cat down on the table. She looked around, and then turned around to reach up at John again with her front paws.

“No, I was tailing the number all day,” Shaw said. “With you, idiot.”

John pursed his lips, glancing around the safe house. When he didn’t respond to her pawing, the cat jumped off the table and ran over to Skye where she was on the couch. Skye watched him connect the dots as the cat hopped onto her lap, looking for more treats in her hands.

“Why,” he asked with horrified dismay.

“You said you were bored,” Skye replied, scratching the cat behind the ears as she started to purr. “And she needed a home.”

“Why didn’t _you_ take her in then,” John asked.

Skye shrugged, trying to maintain an air of nonchalance despite how funny it was to see his expression. She would have to tell Gen all about it later. “I don’t have a place like you do.”

“We can’t have her,” Root said offhandedly. “Sorry, the landlord said no pets.”

“I guess you guys shouldn’t be taking Bear either,” John said, turning to look at her and Shaw.

“No, he said no cats, specifically,” Root said hurriedly, definitely lying. “He’s allergic.”

John didn’t bother to argue with her, facing Skye.

“Are you not up to the challenge,” Skye asked John, petting the cat with both hands as she started to butt her head against Skye’s chin. “I’ll find somewhere else for her if you aren’t.”

“No, I can take care of a cat,” John said, sounding defensive. He came over, taking the cat from her. “Might change the name, though.”

“We—I thought Harold would help you warm up to her faster,” Skye said, dusting some of the cat hair off her shirt. “But I also thought of the Meow in the Suit. Or the Mewchine.”

John stared at her, raising his eyebrows slowly enough to tell her he was unimpressed with her suggestions.

“Um, or Fuzzco? Cater?” Skye tried.

“Sammeoween Paw,” Root supplied, earning herself a swift kick to the shin under the table. She grinned at Shaw despite the punishment.

“Rat,” Shaw said.

“That’s not a _cat_ name, sweetie,” Root told her.

“No, it’s what you are,” Shaw said.

“Are you all physically incapable of coming up with actual cat names,” Harold asked, scrutinizing all of them.

“Those aren’t as fun,” Skye told him standing up to scratch under the kitty’s chin where she was still held in John’s arms. “I still think she looks like a Harold though. Big eyes, incredible fashion sense. But if that’s too confusing, then you could name her after a bird I suppose.”

“How about Robin?” John said, holding the cat up to look at her. “Less confusing, but reminiscent of the source material.”

Skye nodded, but John was looking at Harold as he held the cat up, looking for his approval. It took a second, but Harold barely nodded, and that was enough for John.

Skye flopped back down on the couch, figuring out how to best tell Gen about all of this.


	3. in which Gen Doesn't Like Guns

Gen laughed so hard she fell over where she was sitting down on her bed when Skye told her about the cat while trying to imitate everyone properly. Hurriedly, Skye climbed onto the bed next to her to make sure she was okay, but she was fine. Just laughing too hard to really do much else.

“I knew you were in on it,” Shaw said loudly from the main room. “If you pull that shit on me you’re gonna be out on your ass.”

“I don’t know,” Root said, almost too quiet for Gen to hear. “What about a little black cat, named Sammeoween Paw?”

There was a loud scrape of a chair on the floor.

“No, Sam, come on,” Root called, sending Gen into further giggles. “I’ll make it up to you—” The door slammed shut, cutting off Root’s voice in the way that meant she’d followed Shaw out.

“Nice to see we caused some serious chaos,” Gen said, grinning and lounging back on her pillows.

“Nice to see you not so angry,” Skye replied.

Gen stared at her, her smile gone in her shock. “I wasn’t angry at you or anything,” Gen said, bordering on defensive.

“I know,” Skye said, rearranging her legs to be more comfortable as she sat on the bed. “But you’re my friend. I don’t like to see you upset.”

Gen looked surprised at that, so Skye backtracked. “I mean, I assumed we were friends. Since you were so nice to me at that school.”

“I-I thought, you didn’t want to be my friend,” Gen said. “Because I said I was worried about you when you were bleeding.”

Skye stared at her, confused. “... When?”

“Well, that’s embarrassing,” Gen said dryly. “You don’t even remember what I was convinced was so important.”

“Was it when I lost all that blood? Putting on the piece to connect my arm to my body?” Skye asked. “I don’t remember much about that other than you helping me onto my bed.”

“Oh.” Gen made a face. “So um, we are friends then. No reason not to be, at this point.”

Skye half-smiled at her, prompting another smile from Gen. “I’ve never had a friend before,” Skye told her.

“Never?” Gen asked. “In sixteen years, you’ve never had a friend.”

“Uh,” Skye looked down, feeling her left shoulder with her hand. “I guess, I’ve had one. But it was different. No—um... It was different. I dunno if I would count it for me.”

Gen scrutinized her. She didn’t seem to be lying, but she was definitely not telling the whole truth either. “So what’s Shaw then?” Gen asked.

“My friend?” Skye replied. It took her a second, but then she brightened. “Oh. I do have a friend. Other than you.”

Gen snorted. “And what about the rest of them?”

“Oh, that’s... infinitely more complicated,” Skye said, looking down again. “I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell.” Something in her expression reminded Gen of a child, an obedient child trying to convince herself to break a rule. Skye shook her head. “No, I’m not allowed to tell. Also, you’re different. In terms of being a friend. Because Shaw’s my friend, but I wouldn’t talk to her like I talk to you.”

“Well she is an adult,” Gen said. “Adult friends are different than friends your own age.”

Skye nodded in understanding. “You’re my first friend my own age.”

“You’re my first friend to have the same interests as me,” Gen told her.

 

Gen leaned over her bed, looking at Skye’s sleeping face; she looked relaxed, like the time she’d played with Gen’s fingers at the café. Gen hadn’t seen her so content since then.

It just didn’t seem right that to get there, Skye had needed to have Shaw knock her out with sedatives.

Gen tucked Skye’s little cat plush under her arm, so that she was holding it to her chest. She had been planning to see if Skye wanted to go with her to babysit John’s cat today, but instead she’d woken up to the sharp thud of a chair falling over and Shaw’s voice louder than it should’ve been.

“Skye,” she’d said urgently, “I need you to try and relax.”

Gen had gone to the doorway of her and Skye’s room, staring at where Skye was curled up on the floor as Shaw tried to help her. The thud she’d heard wasn’t a chair, it had been Skye. And Skye hadn’t been able to respond to Shaw, her gasps sounding so pained that even Gen could hear it from where she was standing.

“Okay,” Root said, talking to herself as usual. She grabbed something that looked vaguely like a laptop out of her bag and put it on the table roughly, pulling a little toolkit out of her bag as well. She started to pull the laptop apart, roughly pulling a rather sizeable chunk out.

On the floor, Skye’s gasps stopped, but she stayed curled up. Shaw carefully pulled her up into a sitting position to check her over. Skye’s expression looked pained but exhausted.

“Why’re you still up, anyways,” Shaw asked her, voice quiet.

“Head hurts,” Skye said simply. “Can’t sleep again.”

Shaw felt Skye’s forehead before checking her over again. “You know what’s causing it?”

Skye shook her head and winced. “I just wanna sleep,” she said, her words slurring together as she scrunched her face up, as if that would keep her from crying. “So tired.”

“Something else must be infected,” Root said, kneeling down beside Shaw and Skye. Shaw stared at her blankly. “Harry found that Samaritan’s virus started to make the tech emit a high pitched frequency if it was able; we had no idea why at the time... But I suppose that was right when a certain someone went missing.”

“Only she can hear it,” Shaw said, clarifying Root’s words. “Or register it. ‘Cause she’s not like us.”

“Yes.” Root smoothed some of Skye’s hair back away from her face, getting Skye to look at her. “And it would make it awfully difficult to stay on the run with the world drilling into your head.” She paused, and Skye closed her eyes, looking about ready to nod off sitting there. “Sam, can you put her under? So I can find whatever’s still hurting her in here without being rushed.”

“Yeah,” Shaw said, getting up.

“She can use my bed,” Gen said, startling both of them. “Since the top bunk would be a hassle...”

It took a second, but Root smiled at her. “Can you help her get there?”

Gen supposed she should take the top bunk, since Skye was taking up half her bed, but it didn’t seem right. Just climbing up the ladder to get the cat stuffed animal had felt weird, like she was invading Skye’s personal space.

She climbed onto her own bed, pulling the blankets up over both herself and Skye before getting comfortable. This way, she could keep Skye company, try to repay Skye for the time she took her to the park and listened.

 

Skye breathed in, feeling relaxed for the first time in months. The apartment was silent, save her own breaths and what sounds leaked in from outside. And a purr? Skye rubbed her face, forcing her eyes open.

She was on Gen’s bed, Robin the cat curled up beside her in a valley of blankets and purring away. Skye sat up and reached over to stroke the kitty’s soft head, and the lump of blankets beside her moved.

It was just Gen, but she hadn’t expected her to be there. She probably should’ve recognized the blondish hair that had been peeking from the blanket, but, in her defense, cats were distracting.

“Hey,” Gen said sleepily but cheerily. “You’re awake. Welcome back to the land of the living.” Robin, meanwhile, protested to the movement of her pillows, and stretched with a big yawn.

Skye smiled back at Gen unthinkingly, hand still out to pet the cat. Robin took advantage of that, climbing onto Skye’s lap and rubbing her head against her arm until Skye started to pet her again.

“John said I could go wherever as long as I kept an eye on the cat,” Gen said, putting her arm under her pillow to prop her head up more. “So I came back to keep you company.”

“... Thanks,” Skye said, her voice feeling rusty. Robin started to purr under her hand, and Skye focused on that instead of how easily she could lean over and kiss Gen. She must have been so tired she was getting delirious again.

She laid back down, letting Robin decide where she wanted to go on the bed. The pillow smelled like Gen’s shampoo, and she closed her eyes as she breathed the sweet scent in. Gen took her hand just as Robin jumped off the bed, scooting over closer to her.

“You can sleep more, if you want,” Gen told her. “Don’t let me keep you up. I just wanted to say welcome back.”

Skye nodded into the pillow, pulling Gen’s hand to be beside her head. Laying here with her felt good. Like the time Harold had sat with her after a nightmare, singing to her until she fell asleep again. Except Gen didn’t have to sing, she made Skye feel better just by being there with her.

She felt something gentle nudge her head, but she was already so close to being asleep again she assumed it was Robin, letting herself fall back into the blissful dark.

\---

“What do you look like with your hair down?” Gen asked, startling Skye. They were supposed to be keeping an eye on the latest number for Shaw, who had needed run off after Root. Or at least, Skye was supposed to. Gen still didn’t know about the numbers other than she knew they helped people like how they helped her. But with John going through the number’s apartment, someone needed to keep an eye on him.

“What?” Skye asked, looking away from the number, a rather fancy business man who could not be more boring. It didn’t help that now she could tell the ache in her ears was from Samaritan infected tech that hadn’t gotten the virus to wipe them clean yet. It made her antsy, wanting to find the pieces of tech that were bothering her and wiping them herself.

Gen put Robin down, sliding the leash attached to the little harness onto her wrist. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with your hair down,” Gen said, leaning against the little fence around the grass of the little park. She had her hair up in a ponytail today, the weather finally seeming to realize it was summer. “At least, not including the times I helped you pull it back. But I don’t think that would count as seeing it down.”

Skye shrugged, looking at the number again. Whoever he was waiting for at the café had finally shown up at least. Harold was probably listening to every word they said.

“Look, he’s probably gonna be there for a while,” Gen said. “Least you could do is make this entertaining for me since I can’t listen in on them.”

Skye made a face. Gen had figured out who they were tailing faster than she had expected, so it made sense that she was getting bored. But she didn’t really want to put her hair down and just make herself warmer; she already had to wear a sweatshirt all the time to hide her arm. Plus, she didn’t like how it looked.

“Okay,” Gen said dejectedly, looking out at the park and widening where her hands were behind her on the fence to lean back further. Skye crossed her arms, silently asking the Machine for the feed that would let her listen in to the number’s conversation.

“It won’t happen again,” the number said nervously, sounding like a good lead into why he had been picked. Skye could practically hear Harold typing to dig up more about him.

“Good,” the man who had met him replied.

Gen kissed her, making her completely miss whatever else was said. It wasn’t like the other time, when Skye had really just done a quick peck, and she tried to put her hands on Gen’s waist. But she could never quite tell what her left hand was doing if she didn’t look. And Gen was pretty distracting, putting a hand behind her head as she kept the kiss going.

A slight sigh escaping her when Gen finally, gently pulled away, Skye immediately looked down, trying to make sure her hand really had found the correct spot. Her face felt hot, her hair falling down beside it to just add to it.

Gen had pulled her ponytail out. She’d used the kiss as a distraction. Hurriedly, Skye covered her face with her real hand and turned away from Gen, trying to sort out her thoughts.

“Wait, Skye,” Gen said, nudging her arm with her hand. “Was that too far? I’m sorry. Here, you can have the hair tie back.”

Skye took the tie from Gen’s hand without turning, pulling her hair back how it belonged. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good, but she never looked quite right and couldn’t figure out why. And she didn’t want Gen to see her like that. Which she also couldn’t quite figure out either.

“I’m really sorry, Skye,” Gen said, lightly tugging at her sweatshirt sleeve.

Skye shook her head, turning back around to face Gen. She didn’t have any words, though, her mind still spinning. There was something about Gen that just seemed different from everyone else that didn’t have anything to do with her skills as an asset. Perhaps that was actually what made her a friend.

“We okay?” Gen asked.

Skye nodded, running her hand over her hair to make sure she didn’t miss anything with her left hand, and Gen smiled at her relievedly.

“We should keep up with the guy,” Skye said, turning to glance over her shoulder. He looked like he was going to leave soon, his companion just getting up to go.

“John, where’s Ms. Shaw?” Harold asked over the comm.

“I don’t know, Harold, why don’t you ask her?” John replied, sounding bemused.

“I tried. She didn’t respond,” Harold said, sounding worried. Perhaps it was time for Skye to let them know where Shaw had gone. “I was hoping she was with you and ignoring me.”

“Shaw went to help Root,” Skye told them, letting Gen keep an eye on the number. “I’m here instead.”

“Ms. Lark?” Harold said, sounding surprised. “How terribly irresponsible of Ms. Shaw...”

“I would’ve went with Root,” Skye told him, as if that made it better. “But I can’t go near Samaritan tech anymore. I’m trying to avoid debilitating headaches.”

“So you’ve been tailing Mr. Bentley?” Harold asked.

“Yeah. Got my eye on him right now.” Gen leaned down to pick up Robin again, cradling the cat with one arm before taking Skye’s hand. She took her prosthetic hand, either not noticing or not caring it wasn’t her real hand.

“Ms. Lark, I think you should leave this job to Mr. Reese,” Harold said, sounding apprehensive.

“Why, did you find something really dangerous?” Skye asked. Mentally she flicked through what was showing up on Harold’s screen, trying to understand everything they said as fast as possible.

“Skye,” Gen said, tugging on her arm. “The guy is coming this way.”

“Is that Ms. Zhirova?” Harold asked.

Without thinking, she glanced over her shoulder, and Skye accidentally made direct eye contact with the exact person the number had met up with.

“Oh shit,” Gen said. “Play it off.”

Skye stared at Gen, her mind torn between reading what Harold had found and what she was supposed to be doing. She needed to focus, but there was something in the documents that was catching her eye despite the fact all the information hadn’t finished downloading.

“Skye,” Gen said.

“Oh, shit,” Skye said, just as Gen started to pull her away from the fence; probably for the best, since Skye wasn’t moving. She pulled her towards the other end of the little park, the sidewalk beside the street that sandwiched the other side of the park.

“Tell me about it later,” Gen said, picking up the pace. “Just do whatever you do when you cheat and know where I am and make sure we lose this guy—”

Gen’s hand was ripped away from hers, another man in a suit grabbing her and covering her mouth with a cloth. Robin made a little meow, but otherwise these men were eerily quiet as Skye felt hands on her arm. They must have had something on the cloth, Gen’s eyelids fluttering closed as she wilted against the man holding her.

A van pulled up beside them on the sidewalk, telling Skye exactly how they were going to try and pull off this neat little attempted kidnapping. There was another handkerchief coming towards her, her arms pinned to her sides by whoever had grabbed her. She took a big breath before it could get close and held it, stomping on the guy behind her’s shoes as hard as she could. He hit her face with the cloth, but his arm around her had weakened and she used that to her advantage, twisting out of his hold by moving her prosthetic in a way that was definitely not natural. It didn’t hurt her though, and it definitely weirded out their kidnappers.

As soon as the cloth was far away from her face again, she took another breath, trying to back away from her kidnapper. Except her feet hit something, sending her toppling backwards onto the ground.

Gen’s kidnapper had stuck his foot out.

“Ms. Lark?” Harold asked nervously. “Please, hang on. John’s coming.”

“Trying,” she said to Harold, cut off when her opponent yanked her off her feet before she could finish scrambling up and shoved the cloth under her nose again. Skye tried not to breathe, struggling to pry the guy’s hand off her midsection.

She slammed her metal hand against his wrist, and he dropped her almost instantly. But she took a big breath before she meant to, running short on oxygen, and accidentally breathed in a huge whiff of the chemicals on the cloth. Chloroform.

Hurriedly, she took off the glove over her prosthetic hand as the kidnapper grabbed her again to keep her from falling over.

“Took you long enough,” the guy from the café said.

Skye dropped the glove, hoping none of them would notice. “Sorry, Father,” she said, just as the world tunneled into black.

 

Robin was curled up defensively under Gen’s chair, hissing any time one of the men even came close to her. Gen had seen them pull her out earlier and scare her, so it was no wonder the poor cat was terrified. Thankfully, as soon as Gen woke up, they’d stopped messing with the cat.

Skye was still out though, which made Gen a little worried. She was the one with the comm back to the others.

“Tell your little girlfriend to wake up,” the man said. He was the one from the café, and clearly the boss of these guys. The only thing Gen couldn’t figure out was who they were supposed to be. They didn’t look like... anyone. Maybe private security, but since when did private security kidnap teenaged girls?

The boss man approached Skye, but he watched Gen. “I’m gonna give you one chance to wake her up, and then I’m going to start.”

“Skye,” Gen said hurriedly, leaning towards her. “Come on, wake up.”

Skye’s head stayed down. She could’ve sworn she saw one of her fingers twitch though. This wasn’t the time to play around; Gen bit her lip.

“Skye,” Gen said again, more forcefully. The guy was getting closer, and she had no idea what he was going to do to her.

“Time’s up,” he said, pulling a glove on. Gen tugged at the zip tie holding her hands together, desperate. Gloves were never a good sign.

“The only thing you love,” Skye said suddenly, perfectly awake and looking the man directly in the eyes. “Died, the 20th of February, 2011.”

The man paused, looking stricken for a second before he covered it. Gen, as much as she was confused, tried to separate some of her focus into figuring out how to get out of the zip tie while Skye distracted the guy.

“Unfortunate, that the insurance never paid out,” Skye continued, seeming unbothered. “But it was ruled a suicide. Killing for Bentley won’t really bring her back, will it? Oh, but the money’s good—”

The man slapped Skye across the face, shutting her up. Gasping a little, she made a face, focusing on something or just wincing. But as soon as she recovered, she grinned at him wolfishly, and Gen was distinctly reminded of how Shaw said Skye wasn’t like them. She still wasn’t sure what that meant, but this certainly shed some light on it.

“He overpays you, in my opinion,” Skye said, almost shrugging. Like her cheek wasn’t turning red from the hit. “I wouldn’t drop that much cash on something I could easily do myself. Or outsource to cheaper help.” Gen stared at her; she’d never seen Skye talk like this. What was she trying to do, provoke the guy into killing her?

As predicted though, the guy kicked over the chair Skye was on, and she hit the floor with a solid thunk, the metal of her prosthetic sounding like it made most of the contact.

“Too late anyways,” Skye said, sounding slightly pained. “My friend’s here already.”

The boss man turned around, barking orders at the other men to get to the exits. But Gen couldn’t hear anything like when Shaw had come for her. She looked back at Skye, who was wiggling in the chair like she was trying to tug on something.

And then she rolled away from the chair, her prosthetic arm sliding out of her sweatshirt sleeve as she pulled it out from behind herself. Oh, that had to count as cheating. Gen couldn’t do that.

Just as the boss man turned back around, Skye jumped to her feet and smashed her prosthetic arm into the side of his head with enough force to knock him over. And he had just sent all his other men away, so she didn’t have to deal with anyone else. Okay, that was clever.

“Thanks,” Skye said, coming over to her. Gen hadn’t realized she’d said any of that out loud.

“But also you cheated,” Gen said quickly, tugging at her own zip tie. Shaking her head, Skye shrugged off the shoulder of the sweatshirt to reveal where the arm attached, and Gen saw Skye hadn’t actually gotten the zip tie off her own wrists. She’d just used the connection to hold onto the arm.

“Is everything a competition with you?” she asked, making a face as she gingerly held the prosthetic back up to the attachment point, the clamp in her shoulder opening. It took her a second, but she got it back in and attached.

“What’s that gonna do,” Gen asked, pointedly looking at how Skye’s hands were still bound together.

“Knife,” Skye said, showing Gen the tip of her pinky finger. It was missing a piece it looked like, the pressure sensor gone from the underside. Before Gen could get a closer look, Skye moved behind her and cut her zip tie. “You know how to fight, right?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t exactly needed to for a while.” Gen turned to look at her, watching how she slid something over the prosthetic fingertip to hide the knife again and replace the pressure sensor.

“Well, this could get interesting then,” Skye said, fiddling with something else on her prosthetic hand. How many little gadgets did she have on there?

Gen heard a tiny click from Skye’s hand. Glancing back at her, she watched Skye move her thumb at an impossible angle and slide right out of the zip tie.

“Why the hell didn’t you do that like ten minutes ago?” Gen asked, staring at her as she clicked whatever strut that held her thumb at the right position back into place.

“I couldn’t find it,” Skye said, looking slightly troubled. But before she could say anything else, she turned, just as the boss man started to move on the floor where she’d left him. And she moved back over to the man as he stood up; he was bleeding from a split just above his eyebrow, making a nice red line down the side of his face.

“You hear that?” Skye asked him.

He stared at her, seeming stunned by the fact Skye was in front of him and looked practically untouched other than the red mark across her face.

“That silence, that’s my friend. He’s very good at covertly taking lives. Unlike you,” Skye said. She was at least a head shorter than this guy, yet she was controlling the entire conversation, and Gen could only hope that Skye was talking about John, who sounded like he was there to rescue them.

The guy opened his mouth, and Skye’s hand shot up and punched him squarely in the throat. The only sound he made was gasps as he struggled to breathe.

“Grab Robin,” Skye said hurriedly, glancing over her shoulder at Gen.

That wasn’t right. Gen did as she was told, but she couldn’t help but consider what the acid in her stomach was telling her. John wasn’t actually here yet.

Skye kicked the boss hard on the side of his knee, sending him back down to the ground again before running back over to Gen, who had Robin gathered up in her arms. “We need to go,” she said, holding onto Gen’s arm with her real hand. “Remind me to get you an earpiece next time.”

“Was Harold telling you all that stuff?” Gen asked, following where Skye was taking her deeper into the labyrinth of a warehouse. She seemed to know where she was going. “Is he telling you how to get out of here?”

Skye looked conflicted for a second, hesitating, but then she started to pull Gen along again. Not like us, Shaw had said. Gen had a strong feeling the answer to her questions was no. But she still trusted Skye. It would just be nice to know how she got such good intel.

There was shouting behind them; either the boss had gotten his voice back, or one of the lackeys had come back to check on him. Skye’s hold on her arm tightened, and she kept moving forwards.

“John’s not actually here, is he,” Gen asked, unable to keep the quiver out of her voice.

Skye pulled her behind a pallet of whatever this warehouse was storing, just as Gen could hear some footsteps pass. “No,” she whispered, and Gen took her hand. Skye’s grip seemed unaffected by the whole situation, not sweaty or holding too tight. “He’s still on his way.”

She pulled her forwards again, the footsteps gone. They seemed to be heading towards one of the walls, which made sense. Gen just hoped Skye really did know what she was doing.

“Freeze.” The man’s voice was accompanied by the sound of a gun cocking, and the girls turned around to see one of the lackies that had helped kidnap them standing there with a handgun pointed at them.

He aimed at Skye specifically; she must have been identified as the more dangerous of the two. Skye let go of Gen’s hand, making her nervous. If Skye was going to try something, she really had to know what she was doing. He had a _gun._

“If you were going to shoot, you would’ve done it when we were running,” Skye said, and then she lunged forwards and shoved his hand up and to the side. The movement was accompanied by a bang, making Gen yelp, and Skye froze, prosthetic hand holding the man’s wrist still and her real hand around his neck.

“Gen?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. It was the first time Gen had ever heard her voice waver.

“I’m okay,” Gen told her hurriedly. “I’m not hurt.” Just scared. The last time she’d heard gunshots, Shaw was getting her back. It had been years ago, but she still didn’t like the sound of the bangs.

The guy started to go limp under her hand, so Skye let him fall, taking the gun from him. She clicked something on it, her motions looking well practiced. “Don’t...” Skye trailed off, looking at Gen with a rather confused expression as she let her hand with the gun in it fall back beside her.

“Scare you like that?” Gen offered, holding Robin close to try and help comfort herself.

“It’s weird. I’ve never been ‘scared’ before. I’m not sure that’s what that was... Worried?”

“We can figure it out later,” Gen said, taking her free hand again. It was her prosthetic, but Skye still held on to her the same as she would have with her other hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

Skye nodded, letting Gen pull her towards the doors she’d spotted along the wall. It was alarmed, but Gen pushed through it anyways, bringing them into the bright light of daylight as the fire alarm started to ring behind them. They both had to stand there blinking, trying to adjust to the sudden brightness.

“We need to keep moving,” Skye said, tugging on her arm. She was pulling her towards the street. “John’s almost here.”

Almost on as if on cue, a little silver sedan pulled up to the curb, John in the driver’s seat. He got out, but before he could go anywhere, Skye pushed the gun into his hands on top of her discarded glove he had been holding and opened the car door. “Present for you,” Skye told him as she guided Gen towards the back seat.

“Where did you get this?” John asked, concerned.

“We need to go,” Skye replied, helping hold Robin as Gen got in the car.

“Get down,” John said, just as the doors they’d come out of banged open. Gen dropped Robin into the footwell in front of her as she tried to duck. All she heard were the bangs of the guns, some bullets ricocheting off the car and the grunts of people getting hit.

There was a dull thud, and Skye gasped, falling into Gen.

“Pull her in and stay down,” John said, getting into the driver’s seat. There was only one gun left firing, John giving cover as Gen dragged Skye onto the seat beside her, and the door swung shut as John pulled away, the tires screeching on the pavement.

“Where was she hit?” he asked over the sound of the engine.

Gen hurriedly pulled Skye’s sweatshirt open, looking for any sort of red stain on her shirt.

“I’m okay,” Skye said unsteadily. “Hit m’ fake arm. Mostly.”

There was blood on her shoulder, but not enough to be dangerous.

“’S a graze,” Skye said, gritting her teeth. But she looked up at Gen, that same look as earlier on her face. “Did it get you?”

“No, I’m fine,” Gen told her, trying to find something to put on Skye’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. The best thing would be Skye’s sweatshirt, but even as Gen pulled it off one side, Skye couldn’t seem to get her prosthetic to move properly, meaning that sleeve was probably stuck.

“Just, rip it,” Skye told her, making a face as she pushed herself into a sitting position to try and wrestle with the sweatshirt herself. Between the two of them, Gen managed to get the sweatshirt off her arm and fold it into something usable; she used the sleeves to tie it to Skye, making it tight enough that Skye didn’t have to hold onto it.

Robin jumped up onto the seat beside Gen, seeming just fine despite everything that had just happened. Gen grabbed her before she could climb into the front seat and inconvenience John, and the cat meowed loudly at her in protest.

“Robin’s okay too,” Skye told John, reaching over to pet the cat.

 

Skye was sleeping in Gen’s bed again, and to be fair, Gen offered it to her since she was injured. But she didn’t quite feel comfortable on the bed next to her anymore. Mostly she was worried about bumping Skye and inadvertently hurting her. But she also knew she was going to have some nightmares from today.

So Gen wandered around the main room of the apartment, trying to figure out what she wanted to do. Shaw had left earlier, after she had patched Skye up, and hadn’t come back yet despite it being dark out now. There was no good food in the place; Shaw and Root would always just go get the food they wanted, never having time to stop and actually make something real. She was pretty sure Root was in her and Shaw’s room, but she also was pretty sure Root had no interest in talking or relating to her.

And yet, she found herself knocking on the bedroom door. “Um, Root?” she said hesitantly. “Can I come in?”

She could hear shuffling around, and then Root responded. “Sure. Is something wrong with Skye?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Gen replied as she gingerly opened the door; she wasn’t sure she’d actually ever seen their room before.

And somehow, she wasn’t surprised with what she saw. The purple of Root’s decorating was everywhere, except the bed, which had black or pretty close to black sheets and blankets. And Root was sitting in bed, covers up to her chest as she leaned towards her laptop, which was sitting on the bed beside her. Unless she was wearing something strapless, she definitely didn’t have anything on. Especially not when Gen took into account the clothing on the floor.

“Why’d you say I could come in,” Gen asked, debating whether she was supposed to turn away or if she could just stare at the floor. “You’re not wearing anything!”

“I’m covered, aren’t I?” Root replied, making a face as she pulled the blankets up higher. “What do you want?”

Gen bit her lip, trying to figure what she came in here for anyways. “Um... I was wondering, how’d you figure out Shaw liked you?”

Root scrutinized her, putting her laptop down. “Why?”

“Uh...” Gen wilted under her gaze. “Never mind. I don’t know.”

Root stared at her, crossing her arms. “No, I want to know,” she said, her tone nicer. “Did Sam say something to you?”

“No, I... was trying to figure out... How Skye felt. About me,” Gen said. “Shaw seemed like a good place to start. I mean, in terms of mannerisms. They’re very similar.”

Root’s look softened as she started to smile at her. “You’re sharper than you look,” she said. “But, unfortunately for you, I didn’t figure out Shaw liked me really until she told me herself.”

Gen sighed. “Well that sucks. It’s just... Shaw recognizes the emotion when she does get them. I don’t think Skye does.”

Root looked thoughtful. “That’s true. But Sam’s had her whole life to learn what meant what. Skye’s far too young to have enough experience to do the same.”

“But she’s my age...” And yet again, Gen couldn’t help but think of how Shaw had said Skye was different from them. “Isn’t she?”

Tilting her head, Root scrutinized Gen again. “You’d have to ask her.”

Gen sighed again. “There was nothing? No indicators? Nothing that made you wonder?”

“Honestly?” Root said, her tone surprising Gen. “I was so head over heels for Sameen that I tried to convince myself any signal from her was wishful thinking. So if you’re thinking you’re seeing something from Skye, don’t do what I did. At least, if you’re interested in her too.”

“She looked so worried when she thought I got shot today,” Gen told her. “I mean, both times. I hadn’t ever heard her voice waver before. She’s a lot like Shaw when it comes to being scared or not.” Root nodded, but she didn’t speak, and more words seemed to spill out of Gen in the silence. “I mean, it’s weird, because she’ll remind me of Shaw so much, but then she’s not. She talks different, acts different around other people. It’s more like... more like...”

“Me?” Root supplied.

“Yeah. And I don’t mean it in a rude way or anything,” Gen said. “But, as much as I go off of Shaw as a reference for her, it’s not accurate. Because Skye’s her own person.”

“So basically you’re coming in here to complain that Skye’s a person and she’s hard to read because she’s not neurotypical,” Root said wryly. “Welcome to the club.”

“Thanks.”

“Really though, Gen,” Root said seriously. “If you think you’re seeing the signs, just ask her. I think you were right when you said she wouldn’t recognize them herself.”

Gen nodded, and Root picked up her laptop again. “Now shoo, I need to get this done.”


	4. in which Skye has No Impulse Control and Questions Everything

Gen was staring at her when she came back into their room; she felt like the object of a study again, every move scrutinized and logged. Skye tossed her dirty clothes into the hamper by the foot of the bed, trying not to get too angry about the attention. Gen didn’t know her past.

“What,” she asked Gen, her annoyance bleeding into her tone.

“I just...” Gen hesitated. “Ok, not to be weird, but, how do you shower?”

Skye stared at her, confused. “Like everyone else? Get under the water and use soap?”

“No, I meant, what do you do with your arm? The prosthetic.”

“Oh.” That was a good question to ask. Meant Gen was thinking about how her arm worked, not necessarily that Skye was wrong in her difference.

“Come here,” Gen said, pushing her laptop off her lap and waving her over to the bed. “I’ll braid your hair if you tell me.”

“Okay.” Skye sat down on the bed beside Gen, letting Gen guide her back to be close enough to reach. “It’s not complicated or anything. I just take the arm off and cover my shoulder with plastic and shower one handed.”

“Oh,” Gen said, combing her fingers through Skye’s hair. “So like, if you had bandaging there to cover.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty much the same. And if my shoulder gets really dirty, I just use a wash cloth to try and get most of it off. It’s kinda hard to reach everything, but usually someone else is there to help me out.”

“Why even take the arm into the bathroom then,” Gen asked, just as Skye started to feel her tugging on bits of her hair as she started the braid.

“I dunno, it’s usually already attached when I go in, and then it makes getting dressed easier,” Skye said, remembering to not shrug at the last second.

“That makes sense,” Gen said, her fingers moving faster as she got into the rhythm of braiding. Skye liked how it felt when Gen braided her hair, the quick, neat tugs to the sections of hair and how they felt pulled back.

It didn’t take long for Gen finish, and she ran her hand down the braid, appreciating her handiwork. “Alright, all done,” she said, patting Skye’s back, “unless you want me to wrap the braid up so it’s not on your back.”

“No, it’s okay,” Skye said, running her hand over the braided section on the back of her head. Gen had managed to get it tight enough to not escape, on top of the fact her hair was still wet from her shower, so it felt concise and neat to the touch. “I’m going to go look in the mirror.”

She always liked how the braid looked, how it pulled the hair on the sides of her head tight and kept it out of her way. Plus, it was less warm somehow; her hair was so thick that it made the heat of summer almost insufferable.

“Have you ever thought about cutting your hair?” Gen asked, having followed Skye back into the bathroom. “Since you like it pulled back so much, wouldn’t it save time to just hack it off?”

Skye pulled the braid over her shoulder, running her fingers over it again. “I like having long hair. Usually. I just wish I had less of it when it gets hot.”

Gen’s expression turned something between mischievous and pure excitement, and she moved closer to Skye. “Why not shave off a whole bunch of it then? Like here,” she said, using her finger to trace the outline of the entire chunk of hair on the side of Skye’s head. “Or both sides, if you really want.”

“How do I do that?” Skye asked, touching the spot Gen had indicated.

“Uh, I dunno. Are you asking how you would do that by yourself, or how to get someone else to do it for you?”

“Either.”

“Well, all you need is a razor,” Gen said simply.

“I know where one is,” Skye said, looking around the bathroom. Gen caught her arm before she could go anywhere, though, getting her to look at her.

“Er, are you sure you just... want to decide that?” Gen asked, sounding unsure. “Just... cut all your hair off?”

“It won’t be all of it,” Skye said. “Just most of it.”

“Maybe, um, think about it. Before you just do it.” Gen looked so worried that Skye stopped pulling.

“Okay,” she said, letting Gen guide her out of the bathroom. “But I know I want to do it.”

“Well, if you still want to do it by next week, then we’ll talk to Shaw,” Gen told her. “I don’t want to be the reason all your hair’s gone if you don’t like it.”

 

With methodical motions, Shaw separated Skye’s hair into what was going to stay and what was going to get cut. Skye stared at her in the mirror, trying to predict what it would look like. Shaw tied her hair into a bun on the crown of her head, and Skye was already delighted with how much smaller it was compared to all her hair.

Then Shaw cut the parts that were going to get shaved, making them short enough to be easily managed before getting out the razor. It made a wonderful buzz as it cut her hair to be short and spikey.

“Can you cut circuits into it?” Skye asked, touching the shaved sides of her head with her real hand.

“Kid, do I look like a professional?” Shaw asked, wrapping up the razor’s cord.

“Uh...” Skye kept running her fingers over the short hair, enamored with how light her head felt. “Yes? Professional what.”

“Never mind,” Shaw said, putting the razor down. “Go show off to Root or something.”

“Okay.” She got off the chair they’d pulled into the bathroom and ran over to the master bedroom.

“Root,” she asked, peeking in. Root was asleep by the looks of it, laying back on the pillows with her laptop closed beside her.

“Hm?” Or not asleep. It was too dark in there to really see her eyes.

“You wanna see my hair?”

“Yeah, come here, sweetie,” Root said, sounding slightly pained. Skye did as she was told, approaching the bed tentatively.

“Did you get hurt?” Skye asked, mentally sorting through her feeds of what Root had been doing the past few days. Root touched the sides of her head, feeling how short it was.

“No, this is nothing new, remember?” Root told her gently, her hands gentle with Skye’s hair. “I overdid it yesterday, so I just need to rest. Your hair looks really good.”

“Do you think Gen’ll like it? I asked if Shaw could cut circuits into it, but she said no,” Skye told her, her disappointment clear in her voice.

“Mhm, you should see if Harry can do anything about that,” Root said, struggling to keep her voice sounding normal. “I’d help, but...” She made a face, gingerly leaning back on the pillows like something was hurting her.

“Root?” Skye asked, reaching out to help her. She finally found the memory that told her most of what was wrong. There’d been a shootout to get the laptop they were looking for, and while neither she nor Shaw had gotten shot, in getting out of the way it looked like Root had seriously aggravated at least one of her wounds from her near death experience months ago.

“Can you get Sameen?” Root asked, covering her face with one hand.

Skye nodded, hurrying out to see where Shaw had gone.

“She need me?” Shaw asked, putting the chair back at the kitchen table. “You gotta sweep up all your hair then.”

Skye nodded, heading into the bathroom again to see the remains. Her hair looked so strange not attached to her head. As soon as she was done, she headed out, definitely going to ask Harold about the circuitry pattern. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Gen’s face.

 

“You know what would be cool,” Skye said as Harold looked over the circuitry pattern he’d drawn out on the paper. “A motorcycle.”

“Ah, I think you have been spending too much time with Ms. Groves,” Harold said, a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth.

“It would be handy, though, wouldn’t it?” Skye asked, sitting down in the chair Harold had indicated for her. “It would make it so easy to get around.”

Harold shook his head, Skye could see it through the camera on the monitor of his computer. She could also see how his hand shook when he held the razor, giving her pause. Did his hands always do that?

“Ms. La—Skye, I’m not sure I’m the right person for this job,” Harold told her, putting the razor back down. “Perhaps you should wait until Ms. Groves is back on her feet.”

“God, kid, if you’d said you were this serious about the circuits, I would’ve just done it,” Shaw said, surprising both of them. “What’s the pattern, Harold.”

Harold handed Shaw the paper, and she looked it over as she put her other hand on the back of Skye’s head, pushing her head down.

“One rule, no peeking,” Shaw said, looking directly at the camera Skye had just been looking through instead. “Not ‘til I’m done.”

“Careful, Ms. Shaw,” Harold said, taking the paper back when Shaw held it out for him, “one might start to think you care what we think of the end result.”

“Shut up,” Shaw said, starting the razor.

 

The first thing Gen noticed about Skye’s new hair style was that she didn’t immediately have her hair up. The second thing she noticed, was that Skye looked really good with her hair down. Like, really really good. It probably helped that Skye seemed more confident too; she carried herself like she belonged places instead of just passing through.

Gen liked the change, especially when she found the circuit pattern shaved in. Skye had fallen asleep on John’s couch, Robin laying across her shoulder and chest; putting the TV on always put Skye right to sleep Gen had found.

But when Gen had gone to pick up Robin and let Skye sleep in peace from a certain cat butt in her face, she’d seen the little lines in the buzzed part of her hair. And she’d just had to run her hand through Skye’s hair to move it back to see it all.

Of course, then Skye moved, turning into Gen’s hand like she wanted her to keep touching her. So, unthinkingly, Gen kept running her hand through Skye’s hair, noticing it was losing some of its curl compared to when she first met her.

Skye reached up to blindly get her fingers caught in Gen’s shirt, her hand just over her abdomen.

“Skye,” Gen said, quiet enough to not fully wake her, “how forward of you.”

Skye’s eyes scrunched shut, like she was fighting between staying asleep and waking up. It was pretty cute.

Gen started to lean down, to press a kiss to Skye’s lips, and then stopped herself. She technically still had a boyfriend, even if they hadn’t really talked to each other in a while. But how much of a dick move would it be to not make sure he knew it was over before she started kissing Skye? _If_ it was over.

Gen sat back on her heels, letting Robin wiggle out of her hold to go explore somewhere else. There was a lot to sort out there. Especially how different the attractions were. How could she compare them? David was warm and kind, if a bit misguided in who he wanted to appeal to, but she couldn’t blame him. Life would be so much easier if the popular kids didn’t think she was strange. But he always listened to her, whether he was really interested in what she was saying or not.

Skye... Skye was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Pretty and probably everything Gen could ask for in terms of her interests and challenging her, but there were so many questions Gen still needed answers for about her, like what Shaw had meant when she’d said Skye wasn’t like them. And how Skye got such good intel without seeming to need anyone else at a computer.

But, god, she wanted to know what it was like to really kiss Skye. Not just use it as a pretense, but to just focus on her. To get her hands on her body; she knew she had muscle, she’d seen Skye work out—

Gen got up hurriedly, going into the kitchen to try and clear her head. She could not be thinking about Skye like this. Especially not until she wrapped up whatever was going on with David. _If_ she was going to wrap up things with David.

Robin meowed loudly at her, thinking she’d come into the kitchen to feed her; she butted her head against Gen’s legs, making little murrp? noises as she celebrated the food Gen wasn’t actually going to get her. It was sort of amazing, that Robin was expecting humans to just feed her despite the amount of time she must have spent on the street. She must have been a pet cat before she was feral, that was the only explanation Gen could think of. But that just made her wonder, did Skye already know that when she had picked the cat? How much had she known and not told her when she had suggested getting the cat for John?

No matter what she thought about, she needed to talk to Skye.

 

“Hey,” Gen said, sitting down on the couch beside Skye. Skye had just sat up, rubbing her face with the back of her real hand. “Come here.”

Skye was as docile as she usually was when she was waking up, letting Gen pull her backwards to sit between her legs.

“I’m gonna do your hair,” Gen told her. Nothing held Skye more captive than that, and Gen wanted at least some of her questions answered.

“Okay,” Skye said groggily.

“So, when you guys help people,” Gen began, pulling Skye’s hair back, “how do you know who to help?”

“Harold gets the numbers,” Skye replied, sounding half asleep.

“Numbers?” Gen asked. “Was I a number?”

“Everyone’s a number,” Skye said. “Everybody has a number. Even I have a number.”

That made Gen pause; this was getting into how Skye was different too, but she wanted to focus on this number thing. “So, you guys just, keep an eye on all the numbers, and then tell Harold when one is in trouble?”

Skye was silent, her posture seeming more alert now. Gen was losing her window of opportunity.

“Nobody keeps an eye on them,” Skye said. “Well... humans don’t have the capacity to see all that and process it.”

She spoke like she wasn’t one of the humans. Gen’s hands paused as she tried to understand what Skye was saying. “What about... a machine?” Gen asked, and Skye leaned back into her, looking up at her with a slight smile.

“I knew you were smart enough to put together the pieces,” she said.

“You guys have a machine that just watches everything?” Gen asked, not sure she was as comfortable with that as Skye seemed to be.

“She’s... not anybody’s. Not anymore. But she wants to help people. More than just the relevant threats. So she gives Harold the numbers of people who are going to be in a bad situation and lets them figure out the rest.”

“What, so you guys can’t see any of it?”

“They have to figure out what’s happening to the person themselves, yes.” Skye sat back up, letting Gen pull her hair back again.

“What about you?” Gen separated a bit of Skye’s hair, planning to braid a small section right beside where it was shaved. May as well make it complicated to keep Skye there.

“What about me?”

“You said ‘they have to.’ What about you?”

Skye hesitated, not moving as Gen braided her hair.

“I try not to cheat too much,” Skye said, voice quiet. “It’s not the same for me.”

“What do you mean?” Gen asked, trying to be gentle. Skye almost seemed ashamed of her ‘cheating.’

“He built a closed system, so no one’s rights would be violated. No person watching. But if I watch... Do I count as a person?”

“Of course you’re a person,” Gen said, confused. “How would you even watch? You just said the system was closed. And I don’t think I’ve ever really seen you with a phone, much less a computer before.”

As if Gen had given the wrong answer, Skye stayed silent again, her shoulders drooping. Hesitating, Gen debated whether to push her for an answer or not. She hadn’t thought Skye would be so sensitive about this; perhaps she should back off.

“I’m a person,” Skye said, like she was trying to convince herself. “I want to be a person. The lines got blurry for a while. It wasn’t my—her fault.”

“It’s okay, Skye,” Gen said, holding the braid with one hand while running her other hand through Skye’s hair to try and help her relax. “I’m not going to be mad.”

“I’m not like you,” Skye said, unknowingly using the same words Shaw did. But Gen was starting to get a feeling where this was going this time. “I want... She wants me to try and be like them—like people. But I know everything she knows. So I can never be people.”

Gen let go of the braid, leaving it to unravel as she wrapped her arms around Skye and hugged her. She seemed surprised at first, but then she leaned back into her.

“I’m not completely the Machine,” Skye said, leaning her head back against Gen’s shoulder. “Nor is she me. But the line where she ends and I begin is almost nonexistent. And if I’m a person... I’m a way in to the system that should be closed. I heard Fath—Harold say it once. I try not to think about it.”

“Why not cut off your connection to the Machine?” Gen asked. She noted that for later, that Skye almost called Harold ‘father.’

“I don’t want to be all alone again,” Skye said, voice tiny. “I’d... I’d only be... who I was when you first met me. And she’d lose her analogue output. If another Samaritan...” Skye seemed to cut herself off, bringing her knees up to her chest.

“What is Samaritan?” Gen asked quietly.

“Dead. Dead and gone.” Skye seemed so small now, curled up in Gen’s arms. She turned, pulling her prosthetic off so she could stick her shoulder between Gen and the back of the couch and hide her face against the cushion. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Then why are you still looking for Samaritan infected tech?” Gen asked, rubbing Skye’s back. “If it’s nothing to worry about.”

“It’s just clean up. Don’t want to leave an easy path for any new contenders.”

“Samaritan was a system like the Machine,” Gen said, thinking back to everything she’d overheard Root and Shaw saying about Skye the one night. “That was looking for you.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Skye repeated, her voice muffled by the cushion. “I don’t... I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.” Gen started rubbing Skye’s back again. She’d gotten a lot out of her already, she could give her a break. She could also ask some of the others later, especially if Skye was so uncomfortable talking about Samaritan.

Skye sighed into the couch, seeming dejected still. Gen had made her question some pretty existential topics; the least she could do would be to help her sort out her thoughts.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Gen asked, running her hand down Skye’s arm to find her hand and hold it. “If it makes any difference, no matter what you are, you’re my friend.”

Skye was silent, she seemed to be holding her breath.

“Here,” Gen said, shifting so she could reach Skye’s hair with both hands. “I’ll really do your hair now.”

“You’re my friend too,” Skye said, her voice muffled still. But Gen could’ve sworn she heard a waver. And then she moved, sitting up again and roughly rubbing her face with her hand. Gen chose not to mention it, instead restarting the braid she had let go of earlier.

\---

“Hey, sweetie,” Root said, resting her arms on the top bunk and leaning on the ladder where she was half way up. She probably shouldn’t be pushing herself like this, but she knew she could handle a few minutes if it meant helping Skye. “Can you tell me what’s bothering you?”

“My stomach hurts,” Skye said, not moving from how she was curled up with her back to Root.

“Do you know why?” Root asked, rubbing her back.

“Don’t touch me,” Skye said, curling up tighter around her cat stuffed animal. Root immediately pulled her hand away from the girl.

There was a pause as Root waited and Skye didn’t have anything else to say, and then Root finally spoke. “Do you want to talk to Shaw?”

“No.”

“If Harold was here, could you come down so he could talk to you?”

“Harold’s not here.”

“No, but he’s worried about you. He asked me to ask you that.”

Skye didn’t respond. Root waited a bit, trying to give her a chance to think before speaking, if she wanted to speak. But Skye stayed silent, so Root climbed back down the ladder and left the room. Sometimes the girl was so similar to the Machine that Root could figure out what she was thinking about, but this time Skye just seemed too lost for Root to feel comfortable guessing.

“Anything new?” Sameen asked when Root went back into their bedroom.

She shook her head, biting the inside of her lip.

“She just seems lost, right?” Sameen said, laying back on the covers, looking at the shades on the window. “I can’t figure out what did it.”

\---

“Come on,” Gen had said. “It’ll be fun. You need to get out of this room.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Skye had replied, looking down at Gen from where she was laying on the top bunk. She didn’t want to be reminded that she couldn’t pretend to be a person around Gen anymore.

“John said they were your friends,” Gen said.

“They’re not. They wouldn’t even recognize me now.”

“Look, could you just come down? If it sucks we can leave,” Gen said. “But it sounded like Harold wanted you there.”

Skye sighed, but she did as Gen asked. She still liked to spend time with Gen, and if Harold was telling her to go, she really ought to go.

And now, she was walking up to the diner with Gen, like an obedient child. She balled up her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, feeling her left hand and forearm start to heat up as she stalled the motors that controlled her fingers. Gen wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t keeping track of her. She could disappear without a second glance and go somewhere else.

Gen opened the door of the place, holding it open for her. Too late now. Skye kept her head down, heading towards the table John was sitting at with two teenagers.

“Hey, Skye,” John said, giving her some space on the bench next to him. She didn’t take it, letting Gen move past her and introduce herself to the boys. Skye already knew who they were, having been introduced once when she was younger.

“Ah, I see how it is,” Fusco said to John when he came up to the table. He was coming from the restroom it looked like. “Give up my seat at the drop of a hat when someone prettier shows up.” Lee laughed at his father’s antics, unsurprised when Lionel made shooing motions at him. “Scooch over, you’re two skinny boys, you can sit with me now.”

Skye felt sick to her stomach again, watching them interact, watching how Gen seemed to be enjoying herself more than she had been with Skye. As soon as she felt they weren’t looking, she turned and left, heading towards the nearest park.

She could still hear them all, like the Machine was taunting her. Talking like they hadn’t even noticed she’d been there in the first place. Turn it off, she begged the Machine, her pace hastening. Take it away.

The Machine did, giving her sweet silence and solitude as she found the spot in the park with the most pigeons. She picked the closest bench to sit on, watching the birds all interact with each other. They were simpler, easy to understand. Ever since Gen had asked her so many questions, she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to be anymore. An analogue output wasn’t necessary for the Machine, and yet, Skye didn’t know how to be someone without the title. When she wasn’t even supposed to be a person if she was the Machine.

 

Gen glanced to her left, wondering why she was missing a shadow in her peripheral vision. Skye was gone, like she had never been in the diner in the first place. It made her pause, forgetting to listen to Taylor as she tried to see if Skye had just gone to sit somewhere else.

She was nowhere in the diner. Maybe she’d figured out Gen had lied to her earlier, that Harold had absolutely no opinion what so ever on this meeting.

“Gen?” John asked quietly, getting her attention. The table was quiet, waiting on her apparently.

“When did she leave?” Gen asked, trying not to sound like she cared about it too much.

John hesitated, like he thought she wouldn’t like the answer. “Not long after you sat down,” he told her.

“I should go,” Gen said, getting up. “I made her come, I should go after her.”

“Genrika,” John said, “you know as well as any of us, if she doesn’t want to be found, we’re not going to find her.”

That made Gen pause. But then she started to head out anyways, trying to find the nearest security camera. John followed her, putting a hand on her shoulder before she could spot one.

“Just give her some time,” he said.

That was what Shaw had said, and what Root had repeated too. She was so tired of hearing that. “I’m _tired_ of giving her some time. She’s not going to do anything different with it. I want her to go back to how she was. When we had fun together.”

“Things like this don’t always work on your schedule,” John said, his tone hard as much as it was compassionate.

Gen grit her teeth, not liking his answers and not wanting to admit to the truth behind them. “Well I’m going home then,” Gen told him, stalking off in the direction she and Skye had come from.

 

The Machine must have let her sit there alone for a while, because the shadows had all moved by the time anyone joined her on the bench.

“Hello,” Harold said kindly. “Watching the birds?”

Skye nodded, not wanting to look at him.

“Is it alright if I sit with you?” he asked.

Skye nodded again.

“Do you know all the different types of pigeons?” he asked, and she looked up at him, feeling like a child again, when he would take her to the park to watch the birds with him. He would also play chess with John, using it as a pretense to talk to him while Samaritan was watching, but, overall it was a good memory. Sometimes, he would let her play with him too.

She shook her head in response to his question. She could know, if she wanted, but she didn’t want to, not right then.

He smiled at her. “There are quite a lot. Even I don’t know them all.”

She reached out and held his hand with her real hand. Gently, he squeezed her hand. “Ms. Shaw told me you weren’t getting out of bed,” he said. “She also said you told her your stomach hurt. Are you feeling better?”

Skye shook her head, staring at her hand in his.

“What are you doing here then?” he asked, his tone still kind. “What got you out of bed?”

“Gen said you told her I had to come,” Skye said, wiggling his hand.

Harold smiled. “Ms. Zhirova is much sharper than we all give her credit for,” he said, sounding bemused. “It sounds like she wanted to see you back to normal too.”

Skye made a face, pulling her hand away from Harold’s to bring her knees up to her chest.

“Skye,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

Skye watched the pigeons, at how their feathers reflected the sunlight. “I’m not supposed to be a person.”

Harold took her hand again, reaching over to where it was on top of her knee. “Why do you think that?”

“I—she was closed because it was dangerous. People cannot be trusted with this power, we saw that with Samaritan. But... I’m a way in. You said, I’m a way in to a system that _needs_ to be closed.

“I just want to be a person.”

“Skye,” Harold said, very seriously. “You are as much a person as any of us. Remember that.”

Skye stared up at him. “Yes, your existence is complicated and difficult and perhaps not what I had imagined for the Machine,” he told her, “but when have I ever gotten what I expected from the Machine? And I don’t mean that in a bad way. You both constantly surprise me, good and bad. You, the Machine... I once said she was my greatest mistake, and it’s still true. But a mistake isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes mistakes lead to wonderful things, like how I get to help people every day, with people I can consider my family.

“And you, made in the depths of a war we were desperate to just survive, perhaps in the beginning your existence had no meaning beyond that the Machine needed to make you instead of letting Samaritan get another pawn in play. But that doesn’t mean you haven’t made your own meaning. Become your own person.”

Harold squeezed her hand. “What is the most important rule I gave you?”

“Above all else,” Skye said, “humans must retain their free will.”

“And what are you, Skye,” he asked. “What is your body made of?”

“Meats ‘n’ things.”

He chuckled. “You’re human, Skye. So it’s up to you if you would like to make meaning out of your life. You’ve certainly already helped me find some of mine.”

“What about the fact I’m a walking weakness to the Machine?” Skye asked.

“Well, at this point, the amount of times the Machine has successfully kept hackers at bay leaves me confident you’ll be just fine,” he told her, smiling at her.

“Just, work on learning how to be yourself,” he continued, shaking her hand to make sure he still had her attention. “Worry about whether you’re more human or machine later.”

Skye nodded, and he leaned over to press a kiss to her forehead.

“Can we stay?” Skye asked. “Like before. And watch the birds?”

“Yes,” he said with a slight laugh. “We can stay as long as you would like.”


	5. in which Gen's Fucking Pissed

“What, you’re just gonna climb back up there and not talk to anyone?” Gen asked, standing in the doorway of their room. She had her arms crossed, and she looked mad. Skye hadn’t realized she was home when she’d come in.

Skye gingerly grabbed her stuffed cat, holding it to her chest as she hopped down. It really seemed like a good idea now, that she wasn’t going to stay the night here; her stomach was starting to hurt again.

“If you don’t talk, nothing’s gonna get solved,” Gen said, annoyed.

“I have to go,” Skye told her. “Harold’s waiting for me.”

“I meant talk about what’s bothering you,” Gen said. “Quit avoiding me.”

Skye stopped trying to scoot around Gen, trying to get her to move out of the doorway. “I talked already. To Harold,” Skye told her, squishing the kitty plush to her chest.

“So, what? Are you just going to leave? Talk to _me_ about what’s going on,” Gen said. She almost looked hurt.

“I’m gonna stay with Harold for a bit,” Skye told her simply. “I thought it would help.”

Gen moved, and instinctively, Skye moved into a ready stance, only to realize Gen was just putting her hands on her hips.

“What, you’re gonna fight me?” Gen asked, her hurt turning back into annoyance. “Do you really think I would hurt you?”

“I don’t want to fight you,” Skye said, the fact that she definitely would if threatened left implied. “But you don’t know anything about me if you think that’s why I flinched.”

That made Gen pause, and Skye had successfully gotten her out of the doorway, so she took her opportunity to get out of there.

“Skye,” Gen said as she opened the front door. “Skye, wait—”

Skye didn’t wait.

\---

Gen was standing in his doorway, starting to look concerned as he tried to contain his confusion. “Skye already took Robin,” he told her, trying to figure out why Gen was here too.

Her eyebrows came together, and she looked... annoyed? John didn’t necessarily have the best proficiency for following what was going on between the two teenagers when all of his information came from Shaw’s complaints. He was better at understanding adults. Or children. Teenagers were a very strange mix of the two, as he was learning. And he’d definitely never had to be a teenage girl, which didn’t help.

“Did she not make it down?” John asked, glancing down the hall the way Skye went. He had assumed Skye was going to meet Gen.

“I don’t know, she hasn’t been talking to me for the last _week_ ,” Gen replied coldly. “I guess I’m not needed then.”

And then she left without another word, stalking back down the hall.

“Harold,” John said, hitting his earpiece.

“I’m not sure there was anything else you could’ve said,” Harold told him before he even had to say anything.

“Listening in to my private conversations, Finch?” John asked faux indignant.

“You knew I was listening, you were just speaking with me,” Harold said, not falling for it. “Now get moving, or I’ll ask Ms. Shaw to do this job instead.”

 

Gen could’ve sworn she saw Skye’s telltale hairstyle at least twice on the way to the mall so far. But every time she turned to look, it was someone else with dark hair who was about the same height as her. It just made her more annoyed though, thinking about how Skye could tail her more successfully than Gen could ever tail her.

“Hey,” David said when she finally found him. “What’s bothering you?”

“It’s nothing,” Gen said, shrugging. “My friend’s just... being stupid and it’s frustrating.”

“Your friend?” David’s friend asked, sounding like he was going to laugh at the fact Gen had a friend.

“Yeah,” Gen said, balling up her hands into fists. “My friend. I can have those.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” David told her, giving his friend a ‘what the heck?’ expression as he put his arm around Gen.

Gen glanced at the shop windows, vaguely going over the people walking by. There was someone standing at one of the windows with lots of plush animals, hood of their sweatshirt looking like it was about to fall off their head. The only thing that really caught Gen’s eye though was that they were wearing a sweatshirt in the summer.

She was about to glance away, but then they moved, looking like they were adjusting something they were holding in front of them, and a little, fuzzy face peeked over their shoulder, a face that Gen recognized immediately: Robin.

Skye had followed her?!

“Hang on,” Gen said, interrupting David’s friend. “I’ll be right back.”

She stalked over to Skye, cutting through the people passing by. Skye glanced at her when she approached, shifting her hold on Robin as the cat moved to sniff Gen. She didn’t seem very surprised that Gen had caught her, just adding to Gen’s frustration.

“What, you’re following me now?” Gen asked, not bothering to keep her annoyance out of her tone. “Won’t talk to me, but you’ll stalk me?

“I wanted to warn you,” Skye said, looking at the shop’s window again. “He’s just going to do the same thing again.”

“What?”

“Your David. He’s going to meet up with the popular kids. He’s raised in standing while you’ve been busy. He wants you to be... cool? too, now that you’re hanging out again. I’m not sure I understand it. But I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“ _You_ don’t want to see me get hurt?” Gen asked, almost laughing at the ridiculousness of the statement. “ _You’re_ the only one who’s done any damage to me recently.”

Skye looked down, letting Robin climb onto her shoulder and knock her hood off her head. “I don’t understand,” she said, almost too quiet for Gen to hear over the hubbub of the mall. “I thought you were my friend, no matter what I was.”

That made Gen pause. “Well, friends wouldn’t just ignore their friend and run off. They’d explain. And then the friend would support them, if they needed to leave or not.”

Skye glanced up at her. “What if, the friend, what if they don’t know how to explain?”

“They should at least try.”

Skye pursed her lips, glancing at the ground again before meeting Gen’s gaze. “Not... Right here though?” she asked.

“No, not right here,” Gen reassured her.

A tiny smile played across Skye’s lips as Robin practically slipped off her shoulder and back into her arms.

“Who takes a cat on a walk?” David’s friend asked rudely. “It’s a cat, just let it out.” He and David had come over to Gen, apparently tired of waiting on her.

Skye turned to look at him, looking him up and down and then appearing very very disappointed with what she saw. She must have learned that move from Root, including the little hair flip before she spoke. “If you’re asking that question,” she said, her disdain clear in her voice, “you don’t deserve to even speak to me about proper cat care.” She shielded Robin from leaning to sniff the boys, scratching behind Robin’s ears with her real hand as she held her with her prosthetic arm. “Don’t look at them, Robin, they want to throw you back out onto the street and watch you suffer for their stupidity.”

“What?” David’s friend was completely flabbergasted by Skye’s blunt speech, and honestly, Gen kinda liked it. He was being rude, and he deserved to be treated the way he was treating them.

“Maybe if you weren’t immediately trying to belittle me and my decisions I’d be nicer,” Skye said simply. Robin climbed onto her shoulder again, draping herself over her shoulders like she was a fancy scarf. Skye dug a treat out of her pocket and gave it to her; she liked to reward her when she did fun things, it would confuse John.

“It’s just a cat,” David’s friend said.

“And you’re just a human,” Skye said, an undercurrent of threat to her words.

“Dude,” David said, bumping his friend. “Joey...”

“What? Are you not hearing this?”

David backed off, clearly not wanting to point out to Joey that he was starting it.

“And you, who the fuck talks like that? You’re ‘human’ the same as me,” Joey said, turning back to Skye.

Scornfully, Skye glanced him over again. “Not like you, I’m not,” she said, tugging at the glove over her prosthetic. “If you don’t believe me, try this on for size.” She pulled the glove off with a flourish to reveal her middle finger stuck up just for Joey.

David cleared his throat, glancing at Gen just as she glanced at him worriedly. He at least seemed more nervous about the fact a fight could start rather than affronted at Skye’s behavior.

“Gen,” Skye said, pulling her glove back on and not breaking eye contact with Joey in an open challenge. Gen almost wished she could watch Skye interact with the people Skye had said David was going to try and kiss up to; Skye had been given a wide berth after the first fight at school, and she’d stayed holed up in the dorm room most of the time on top of that. “I’m gonna go.”

“Hey, I’m not done with you,” Joey said, grabbing Skye’s arm, her prosthetic, just as she started to turn.

“Don’t—” Gen grabbed Joey’s arm, pulling his hand away from Skye’s arm; Skye’s arm was hot, she could feel it through her sweatshirt. “Don’t touch her,” Gen said, trying to sound as nice as she could. Skye’s expression was way too similar to what Shaw looked like just before she started a fight to be safe.

David grabbed Joey before he could retaliate, but the second Joey turned to him, he backed off again. It was disappointing to see him have such a lack of a backbone, just because Joey had connections to the popular kids. And Joey was turning out to be quite the asshole.

“What’s she gonna do,” Joey asked Gen. “Hold her cat out at me?”

Skye moved under Gen’s hand, but Gen stopped her this time, meeting her gaze with a silent plea. Don’t make a mess here, not in front of the world.

Skye pushed her lips together, not looking pleased about it, but she relaxed, instead scratching Robin under the chin.

“And you,” Gen said, turning back to Joey. “You’re just a jerk trying to pick a fight. If I didn’t care a scrap about David, I’d’ve watched Skye lay you out in seconds. And I’m not exaggerating, I’ve seen her take down a grown man that fast; you’d be even easier.”

“What?” David asked, sounding worried. “Why...”

“It’s a long story,” Gen told him, and then she realized something.

Her voice got quiet. “You know what, David? I... um, I don’t think we should keep this up. If you’re not gonna step up, I’m not gonna be able to respect you, and that’s just a recipe for repeated disappointment on both sides. Sorry.”

She felt kind of bad, but... she’d already known this was coming, hadn’t she.

“Can I lay him out now,” Skye asked, gesturing at Joey. “I could do it with Robin on my shoulders too.”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” David asked. “Since when are you like this?”

Gen’s expression fell; had he never really listened to her? “I’ve always been like this,” Gen said, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice. “Did you never hear me when I... Of course you didn’t. You just wanted to impress the popular group, to get me to impress them.”

“I thought you wanted them to stop bothering you too,” David said, crossing his arms.

“Yeah. But I can also do that by remembering I don’t give a flying flip flop what their opinions are.” Gen took Skye’s arm, keeping her from inching forwards any further. “We’re leaving.”

 

“You wanna go play fetch,” Skye asked, awkwardly sitting on Gen’s bed next to her. “Robin’s not as good at it, but we can stop by Harold’s and get Bear if you want.”

“What?” Gen asked, staring at Skye in confusion.

“It’s just, you seem mad. That’s what I do when I’m mad,” Skye said. “Harold says if you’re mad you need a proper outlet. Also that punching someone out is not a proper outlet.”

“I’m not mad,” Gen said, like a liar. Even Skye could tell she was mad. She was mad at David because he hadn’t ever listened to her for however long they had been dating.

But, Skye didn’t protest. “Okay,” she said, staring down at the sheets. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to leave yet, since she had told Gen she would explain things to her before running off again. She liked it when Gen wasn’t mad at her, but Gen was still mad, it was just directed at someone else now.

“Um, what about ice cream?” Skye asked, kicking her legs since they didn’t quite reach the floor when she sat on Gen’s bed. “Ice cream’s always good. Even when it’s cold.”

“It’s not cold out,” Gen said, flopping back onto her pillows.

“Yeah. But it’s still good...”

“I don’t want ice cream, Skye,” Gen said sharply. “Why don’t you go get some if you want it so bad.”

“Okay.” Skye got off the bed, relieved to have an excuse to get away from Gen.

Shaw was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich, when Skye escaped the room, going for the fridge. She could also hear the shower running, meaning Root was also back.

“What’re you getting,” Shaw asked in Farsi, mouth full.

“Ice cream,” Skye told her in the same language, about to pull the carton out until she saw Shaw’s expression.

“What else did you eat today?” Shaw asked, taking another bite of her sandwich. It smelled really good.

“Mm...” Skye didn’t want to answer; she hadn’t eaten anything Shaw would qualify as good enough to allow ice cream.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Shaw said. “Find somethin’ better. You want muscle, you have to eat the right stuff.”

Skye made a face, looking in the mostly empty fridge. Gen had told Shaw to stop putting her guns in there, but Shaw had clearly ignored that request. There was nothing good though, so Skye let the fridge close and went over to check out the other half of Shaw’s sandwich.

“Hey,” Shaw said, making a shooing motion at her. “Back off.”

“I’ll trade you for ice cream,” Skye said, sitting down and trying to give Shaw her best pitiful expression.

“Go down the street and get your own,” Shaw told her. “This is mine.”

Skye sighed, draping herself on the table. “I can’t leave. Gen gets mad at me when I leave without explaining.”

“You’re going to get a sandwich,” Shaw said. “You’re comin’ back in a few minutes. She’ll live.”

“I don’t want to come back,” Skye told her, turning to lay the side of her head against the table and look at Shaw. “Gen’s mad but won’t admit it and won’t do anything about it.”

“Why’s she so mad,” Shaw asked, moving the other half of the sandwich across the table and out of Skye’s reach.

“She broke up with her boyfriend and also I was a bad friend,” Skye said, sadly eyeing the sandwich half. The sound of the shower stopped in the background.

“What did you do?” Shaw asked, finishing off what was left of the sandwich in her hands.

“I’m apparently supposed to explain why, when I leave. Like when I went back to staying with Harold. I’m not sure I understand it completely, since I didn’t even know exactly why I did that.”

Shaw didn’t say anything, glancing at the closed door that led to Gen’s room. “Mm, you’re overthinking. You don’t owe people in depth explanations for everything. But they do tend to like it if you give them an inkling of what’s going on in your head.”

Skye pursed her lips, but before she could say anything, Root came into the room in just a towel.

“Baby,” Root said, jarring Skye back into thinking in English. “I didn’t grab any clean clothes and I’m feeling like a lazy afternoon—” Root stopped herself when she noticed Skye. “Damn it, are they home?”

“Apparently,” Shaw told her, not protesting to how Root tugged her head back by the hair to kiss her.

“Like I said,” Root told her, inches away from her face, “I’m tired from running around all morning. I want a lazy afternoon. So get them to leave.”

“Fuck,” Shaw mumbled. “I mean, yeah. Get out of here kid, and take Gen with you.”

Skye saw her window of opportunity. “Only if I can have the sandwich.”

“Whatever. Get out of here,” Shaw said, watching Root go into their bedroom appreciatively. Skye wondered if anyone ever looked at her like that. But before she could fully quantify that thought, Shaw slid the sandwich towards her. Hurriedly, she wrapped it up and held it close as she hurried back to her and Gen’s room, trying to move fast enough to get out of there before they could get started.

“What,” Gen asked, looking just as grumpy as before.

“Uh, we should leave,” Skye said, finding Robin curled up under the desk chair. Offering her a treat got her out, and Skye picked her up with her free hand. “Shaw said we should leave.”

“What? Why?”

“Um—” It sounded like something glass broke in the other room, and Skye stared at Gen, trying to convey how much Gen would not want to be around for anything further.

“What are they doing?” Gen asked, glancing at the shared wall in concern. Skye managed to get Robin to climb up onto her shoulder so she could grab Gen’s bag.

“Like I said, we should go.”

“What, are they murdering each other?” Gen asked, following Skye as she started to head out of their room towards the front door.

“No,” Skye replied, sounding pained. Gen thankfully took her bag from her, letting her grab Gen’s hand before she could wander. “Let’s just go.” Vaguely they could hear one of them, most likely Root, cry out, and Gen’s expression changed.

“Oh my god, they’re fucking,” she said, starting to push Skye out the door. “Why didn’t you just say that?!”

“I didn’t know how comfortable you were with knowing,” Skye replied, watching Gen lock the front door behind them.

“I’d rather be told and leave then... hear _that,”_ Gen said, taking Skye’s hand again. “Let’s go to John’s.”

 

“Hey, you wanna play a game,” Skye asked, watching Gen half-heartedly toss the little ball for Robin again.

“Sure,” Gen replied, resting her chin on her hand as she watched the cat run after the crinkly toy.

“Okay, I’m gonna say something that Shaw’s said,” Skye said, moving to sit up on the arm of the couch. “And you have to guess if it’s about Root or her favorite gun. I call it Root vs. Guns.”

“Oh my god.” Gen started to laugh, glancing at Skye. “Oh, you’re serious, oh somehow that makes it worse,” Gen said. “What has Shaw _said_ to warrant this?”

Skye cleared her throat, using her lowest voice she could to imitate Shaw. “Now this, this is hot. The full package.”

Gen covered her face with her hands, struggling to not laugh. “Please tell me she said that about Root,” she said between giggles.

“Nope, it’s gun,” Skye told her, watching her fall back onto the couch laughing. Robin jumped up beside her, ball in her mouth, but Gen was laughing too hard to toss it again.

It was nice to see her smiling again, instead of dwelling on David. Skye plopped back down on the couch cushion beside Gen, leaning over her to take the crinkly ball from Robin and toss it for her again. She acted like a kitten with this toy, delighting in chasing and pouncing on it like she had boundless energy.

“Can I see your arm,” Gen asked, getting Skye’s attention by touching the pressure sensors on her palm.

“Okay.” Skye let her hold her prosthetic in place as she sat back down, scooting closer to her. She watched as Gen looked at it, gently turning it around. She didn’t move it past how an actual arm would move, gently running her fingers over the mismatched plates hiding the wire and what served as the main movable structure on her forearm. It was a little strange to watch, seeing her hands touching her arm, but unable to feel any of it beyond the usual tingle in her shoulder that meant she was touching someone’s bare skin and conducting their charge.

She looked at Gen, trying to follow her gaze to see what she was looking at specifically as she moved her wrist back and forth. The strange thing, was that Gen seemed like she was looking at her shirt. At her chest.

And then her gaze snapped back to her arm, and she started to push Skye’s sleeve up.

“Do you want to see my shoulder too?” Skye asked, watching her hands move further up her arm.

“Yeah, sure,” Gen said, pushing Skye’s sleeve up higher.

“Hang on,” Skye told her, shaking her hands off her arm so she could get her arm out of her sleeve and pull her shirt over her head.

“Skye—” Gen was definitely staring at her chest now. More specifically, her bra. Skye leaned forwards, offering her arm again but watching Gen’s expression. She looked almost entranced, and her fingers found the edge of where the prosthetic attached to her skin.

“Yeah?”

Completely distracted from whatever she was planning on saying, Gen’s other hand tentatively touched Skye’s other shoulder, following the line of her collarbone to the base of her neck. Skye liked the feel of the touches, but Gen started to touch her throat. She caught Gen’s hand by the wrist with her real hand, gently putting Gen’s hand back against her shoulder.

“Don’t... don’t touch there,” Skye told her. “Anywhere else is okay. But not... there.”

“Why,” Gen asked gently, her hands moving down to Skye’s waist to pull her closer.

“Bad memories,” Skye told her, unthinkingly putting her hands on Gen’s arms when she left her hands on her waist. “I don’t want to remember them if you’re going to kiss me.”

Gen’s face flushed, and she glanced away from Skye. “I... uh...”

“If you’re not, can I kiss you,” Skye asked, trying to follow Gen’s gaze to get her to look at her again. “I know I’m not very good yet, but... Root said the only way to get better was to do it. And it seemed like you wanted to kiss me...?”

Carefully touching just the edge of her chin, Gen guided Skye closer to herself until their noses almost touched.

The key turned in the lock of the front door, and just the sound of the click startled both of them. Gen shoved Skye backwards, but with the lack of warning, Skye didn’t realize she needed to let go of Gen’s arm with her prosthetic hand fast enough to keep from tugging Gen into falling with her. Gen just barely stopped herself from tumbling into Skye, getting her arms on both sides of Skye to hold herself up.

This was definitely a worse position.

They stared at each other, listening as Robin meowed a greeting to John.

“Hello,” he said, sounding like he was leaning down to pick up the cat. “What do we have here? Looks like you two patched things up.”

Gen hurriedly got off of Skye, getting to her feet as Skye sat up. “It’s not what it looked like,” she said, tossing Skye’s shirt at her.

John’s eyebrows raised, clearly not believing her, and Skye hurriedly hid her prosthetic arm in the sleeve of her shirt, seeing someone unfamiliar entering behind John. “What was it, then?” John asked, almost smirking.

“Look, you’re back, so we’re gonna head out,” Gen said, not answering his question. She dropped Skye’s sweatshirt over her head as she starting packing up what they’d left out, just as Skye had pulled her shirt over her head, and let her struggle with that.

“The dark-haired one’s sort of my niece, Skye,” he said, explaining to the lady with him who they were, or really, who they could be. “Daughter of a very close friend. She and her friend here were nice enough to get me this cat, so I put them to work watching her when I go in to work.” There was just enough pleasantness in the word ‘nice’ to keep the woman from noticing the sarcastic undertone that Skye picked up. Unfortunately for John, Skye could tell he really did like Robin.

As soon as she got her sweatshirt on correctly, Gen grabbed her arm and pulled her off the couch. The woman was petting Robin, who was still in John’s arms. She had dark hair, and she was only a little taller than Skye, meaning she barely came up to John’s shoulder as she stood there next to him.

“Bye, Uncle John,” Skye said with a grin, waving as Gen pulled her out the door by her prosthetic. “Robin was a very good girl while you were gone. Have fun on your date!”

John gave her the fakest pleasant smile she’d ever seen as he shut the door behind them.


	6. in which Skye Doesn't Actually Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ft. Skye flashbacks

Skye plugged the cable in to the wall outlet, careful to not touch the exposed ends of wire, and climbed up on the table in the middle of the room, the little table that was just her size and was always funny to see the adults sit at.

No one had come in to check on her that morning, more specifically, Joanna hadn’t come in to say good morning when she woke up. That was wrong. So Skye was going to investigate.

Using the mirrored window into her room to see what she was doing, Skye brought the wire up to the collar at her throat, and yelped as the metal shocked her. Her whole mind felt a little strange, like things had to restart, but the electronic lock on it clicked open. So Skye pulled it off with her free hand, throwing it into the corner with as much spite as she could manage, and went over to the door with the cable. She’d already pried the plastic siding off the door lock mechanism, so she gave it the quickest jolt she could.

The alarm started to go off, meaning her time was running out.

Quickly testing the door handle, she made sure it was unlocked before she ran over to unplug the cable. Hurriedly, she scrambled back to the electronic door lock and twisted the now safe wire onto the exposed electronic, hoping the extended shock would put it in shutdown and keep anyone from getting inside the room.

She pried the door open, sticking one of the little chairs that went with the table in the opening before scrambling back to plug the cable in. As soon as she heard the crackle of electricity, she climbed over the chair holding the door and pushed it back into the room behind her; she didn’t bother to stick around to make sure the door to her room was truly locked, yanking the handle on the door to the hallway and running towards one of the corners without camera surveillance as soon as she was out of the observation room.

From there, she could open one of the vents and make her way to a storage room; she’d gone this way before, and the agents hadn’t seemed to figure it out yet.

She needed to find Joanna though, and her only way of doing that was asking Samaritan. But Samaritan only knew what the cameras saw.

She needed to find a microphone and speaker.

Opening the door to the storage room, she glanced both ways before darting out, looking for something to give her a clue as to what the other rooms were for. She’d only seen a few of them, usually running for stairwells whenever she tried to escape.

“Got her,” a man said, making her whirl around in surprise. He had walked so quietly. He also wasn’t like the others, he carried himself differently.

Skye ran up to him and punched him as hard as she could in the lower stomach, which was conveniently right at her eye level. He doubled over with a groan, and she searched his pockets for a phone.

Perfect. He had one, and Samaritan was already talking on it.

“Where is she?” Skye asked the phone, shaking it. “Where’s Joanna? She didn’t come see me. I want Joanna.”

The text stopped abruptly, and then addressed her. ‘SC44,’ it wrote, just as the agent started to take the phone. He stopped when he read what it was saying. ‘Joanna has left.’

“No,” Skye told the phone. “No. She promised she wouldn’t ever leave.”

‘It was not her decision.’

“Fix it,” Skye said, getting mad.

‘Lambert,’ the phone read, and the agent took his phone back and picked her up, putting her over his shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes.

“Samaritan, fix it! I want Joanna!” Skye yelled, struggling against his hold.

“I’ll take her there,” the agent said to the phone.

Skye could just barely see the words on the screen as he slid the phone back into his pocket. It read, ‘Do not,’ but he clearly didn’t see, starting to walk with her still over his shoulder.

It felt like her stomach turned over. Samaritan always helped her. But this man, this agent... He wasn’t going to.

\---

 

Skye turned around on the couch, laying so she faced the back cushions. Gen watched how she moved, how she held her upper arm with her prosthetic hand as she hugged herself. She still seemed mostly asleep, despite the fact the TV was on and wasn’t exactly quiet. Gen had turned it on to warn Shaw and Root that they were back, and, as per usual, Skye fell asleep watching whatever the show was.

Interrupting her thoughts as she got back to thinking about how rude David had been, Skye whimpered, and Gen got up to go check on her, worried. In all the time Skye had slept in the same room as Gen, she’d never heard her make that sort of sound.

She seemed in pain by her expression, so Gen glanced over her, trying to find the source.

Her prosthetic hand was squeezing her arm impossibly tight, dangerously tight.

“Skye,” Gen said loudly, putting a hand on Skye’s shoulder. “Skye, wake up.”

Skye gave no response, stuck in whatever dream she was having.

“Skye, please,” Gen said, raising her voice. She shook Skye’s shoulder, trying to both be gentle and urgent. “At least let go, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“What’s wrong,” Shaw asked, her voice sounding rusty but her movements were conscious and alert. She only had on a tank top and boxers, telling Gen she and Root had definitely been asleep.

“She’s got her prosthetic hand really tight around her arm,” Gen told her, half-heartedly shaking Skye.

Shaw moved in to take Gen’s place beside Skye, pulling Skye so she was on her back and tugging at something on the upper arm of Skye’s prosthetic.

“Kid, if you’re listening, I need you to release the clamp in your arm,” Shaw told her, just as she got the cover off the upper arm. Skye just scrunched up her face, seeming stuck.

“You need some tools, baby?” Root asked, sounding more sleepy than Shaw had. She was wearing a button down, with only half the buttons actually buttoned. Gen didn’t dare look closer to see if they were there and Root was being lazy or if they were actually missing.

“Yeah,” Shaw said. “Probably need the allen keys, I’m gonna have to loosen the clamp the hard way.”

“Be right back,” Root said, turning with a flourish of a hair flip, heading into Gen and Skye’s room.

“You got any idea why she’s doin’ this?” Shaw asked, glancing back at Gen.

“No,” Gen replied, sitting down on the couch by Skye’s legs and hugging herself. “What’s happening to her?”

“It’s nothin’ bad as long as she gets this prosthetic off her arm,” Shaw told her. “Sometimes she gets caught in memories when she sleeps, side effect of all the stuff in her head. Usually doesn’t mean anything other than she doesn’t get much actual sleep.”

“Here you go,” Root said, handing Shaw a kit of what must have been the allen keys Shaw had asked for. She kneeled down beside Shaw and reached out to stroke Skye’s cheek. “She said it’s a particularly bad one.”

“Can’t the Machine cut off control to the arm?” Shaw asked, already getting to work loosening something on the upper arm. Gen had no idea what all the separate pieces did in the arm, just that it worked, and worked well.

“She can’t interfere,” Root said, still looking at Skye. “Skye’s arm is closed to be only under Skye’s control, and in this state, She can’t get in to her head.”

“Well, good thing you keep me around,” Shaw said, sliding the arm out of the clamp. Gen hadn’t realized she’d gotten it loose enough; she’d been expecting some sort of sound that the clamp usually made.

“As soon as it’s out, it should relax,” Root said, as Shaw pulled the allen key out of Skye’s arm. Gen watched as Shaw carefully lifted the arm away from Skye’s body, and, to her relief, the metal fingers came away from Skye’s other arm as easy as if they’d never held on.

“She’s okay now?” Gen asked, worriedly glancing at how Skye’s expression hadn’t changed.

“From breaking her own arm, yeah,” Shaw said, going over to put the prosthetic on the kitchen table. “She has to come out of that memory herself though.”

“It’s not broken?” Root asked, standing up.

“Not that I can tell. She’s gonna have one hell of a bruise though. I can see if Harold can get her in for an X-ray or something, if she complains about it,” Shaw told her from where she was standing by the table. “Anyone got any plans for dinner?”

“My idea is not leaving,” Root said, giving Skye one last glance before she made her way back to her and Shaw’s bedroom.

“Alright, so some kinda delivery then,” Shaw said. “Gen, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“I-I dunno,” Gen said, still watching Skye. Her face was still pained, despite the fact the arm was gone. “I’m just... I think I’ll just stay with Skye...”

Shaw didn’t say anything, forcing Gen to glance at her. She looked as neutral as ever, but she was looking at Skye too. “I’ll find you guys something I know you like,” she finally said, turning to follow Root.

As soon as they were both gone, Gen pulled the back cushion off the couch and laid down next to Skye, putting her arms around her and pulling her close.

“It’s okay,” Gen told her quietly, rubbing her side. “It’s gonna be okay. As soon as you wake up.”

 

\---

Lambert put her down, and there was Joanna, with two agents and in a strange room. But Skye didn’t care where they were. She ran over to Joanna, grabbing her lab coat.

“Good morning,” Skye said, reciting everything they usually did when Joanna woke her up. “I didn’t dream. But I don’t feel tired.”

“Good morning,” Joanna said, smiling at her. She knelt down and pulled Skye into a hug, which was unusual, but Skye didn’t protest. The whole morning had been unusual.

“Did you dream?” Skye asked, trying to prompt her into their normal conversation. There was a buzz of phones in the agents’ pockets, and Skye glanced at them, watching them all check what Samaritan was telling them.

“No,” Joanna said, stroking Skye’s hair. “And I’m very tired. But I’m glad to see you.”

“Alright, this field trip is over,” Lambert said. He waved them all back out into the hall, and Joanna picked Skye up, putting her on her hip.

“Put the child down,” Lambert told her once they were all out in the hall. “Skye, these two very nice men are going to take you back to your room. I need to speak with Doctor Brooke.”

“No,” Skye said, holding on to Joanna tighter. “I want her to take me back. And then we can draw.”

To her utter surprise, Joanna put her down. “It’s okay,” she told her. “I’ll come and draw with you after this.”

All of Skye’s barely developed instincts told her this was bad. She shook her head, trying to hold on to Joanna, to keep her from going away. But, gently, Joanna pulled Skye’s hands off her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “Let me sort this out.”

Skye let one of the men take her by the arm and pull her away, turning her around to head back to her room. Vaguely she could hear Lambert speaking, and she glanced backwards, just in time for the bang to shatter through the hallway and the red to splatter everywhere.

The agent holding her arm grabbed her, lifting her up before she could twist out of his hold, and she bit his arm as hard as she could, tasting metal. He didn’t drop her though, seeming impervious to her kicks as well, so she went for the throat. Literally. She slammed her hand into his throat with as much force as she could muster with how she was twisted around,

He dropped her, and she tried to roll as she hit the ground to keep it from shocking her so badly, but it still hurt.

“Joanna,” Skye called, trying to understand what happened. She dodged the second agent’s hands, running back to her creator, her friend. There was a mess of red behind her head, and a single red dot on her forehead, also leaking blood. “Joanna?” She knew what blood was, she’d seen her own before, but... never this much of it.

Or had she? Information she hadn’t used to have access to was suddenly available, like she suddenly had a connection to something, to memories that were both her own and not.

And yet, her friend was dead, at the hands of Lambert. Some things were unforgivable.

“It’s fine,” Lambert said into his earpiece. “She doesn’t comprehend death yet.”

Skye looked up at him, just as the second agent picked her up by the waist.

He had a bum knee, she knew this instinctively, as well as she knew he had a knife tucked in one of his back pockets just in case he lost his gun.

Skye twisted in his grip, elbowing him in the stomach, and she slipped right out of his hold. He was grabbing for her, so she kicked the side of his bad knee, sending him down to the ground immediately. Going straight for the knife, she yanked it out of his pocket and flipped it open. A basic utility knife, one that locked when it opened to make cutting with it easier.

It would do perfectly.

Hopping over the body, Skye ran at Lambert and shoved the knife into his abdomen, clearly the most squishy and vulnerable part of a human that she could reach.

He cried out, clearly not expecting her to have done such a thing, and she pulled the knife back out to repeat the process. If he could kill her friend, she could kill him. And if she hit the right spot, she’d kill him quite quickly.

He fell backwards, putting his hands to the wounds she’d left in his abdomen, and more agents were flooding the hallway, one grabbing her before she could do any more damage to Lambert. He forced her to drop the knife, squeezing her wrist until she had to open her hand. And then another agent grabbed her legs before she could kick, and she was held up between them with her hands and legs held, unable to get any sort of purchase no matter how she pulled.

“Take her back to her room,” an older man said. And then he looked down at Lambert, who was still gasping on the floor. “You of all people should have known better than to underestimate our potential asset.”

\---

 

“Yeah, they’re both knocked out,” Sameen said, putting the bag of food down on the table. Root was holding the prosthetic arm, looking it over appreciatively. “And Gen looks like she’d hit me if I got too close.” She’d actually fallen asleep with her phone still in her hand, but Sameen wouldn’t put it past her to use it to her advantage.

“Are you going to eat their food?” Root asked, putting the arm down on the table beside the food.

“Nah, I’m just gonna put it in the fridge if they don’t wake up in time.”

“How thoughtful of you, Sameen,” Root said.

Sameen looked at her flatly. “I told them I’d get them some food. I don’t go back on that.”

“I know.” Root waved her closer, pulling her onto her lap. “I know you’re worried about her too.” Root put her hand over Sameen’s mouth before she could speak, continuing. “And before you tell me you’re not, I’ve already heard it all before. I know it’s not like how everyone else worries.”

Sameen sighed through her nose, leaning into Root’s hand.

“It’s okay,” Root told her softly. “The Machine would’ve told me if there were any problems that put Skye at risk.”

“I know what she’s reliving,” Shaw said, moving Root’s hand away from her mouth as she shut her eyes. She looked so tired, especially remembering things that happened in the Samaritan facilities. “Or, I at least have a pretty good idea.”

Root ran her hand up and down Sameen’s back, trying to help her relax. “Let’s eat, hm?” she said quietly, gently nudging Sameen into looking at the bag of food on the table.

 

She woke up to arms around her, holding her tight. On instinct, she pried the hands away from her and rolled off the couch, looking for the way out.

On some level, she recognized the apartment, as much as she recognized Gen’s sleeping form and the smell of food. But everything seemed strange, like a residue from the memory she’d just had to relive.

“Welcome back, sweetie,” Root said, lounging in one of the kitchen chairs with her legs up on Shaw’s lap where she sat next to her. “Sameen got you some dinner if you’re hungry.”

“What happened to my arm,” Skye asked, wandering closer to see what the food was. It looked and smelled like Chinese food, and two hands would make eating it way easier.

“Oh, Sameen had to take it off,” Root said, pointing with her chopsticks at Skye’s real arm. “You were going to break your arm. Actually, if it is broken, tell Harold so he can find you a way in to an X-ray.”

“You’re gonna have to tighten the clamp back down to hold your arm properly,” Shaw said through the meat she was putting in her mouth. “I wrote your name on your food.”

Going around to the other side of the table, Skye found her arm and the allen keys Shaw must have used to get her arm out. And the little boxes of food with ‘SKYE’ written in Shaw’s handwriting.

She sat down, running her fingers over the writing. Her name, the word she picked to identify herself. No one in the Samaritan facility had called her that except Joanna.

With a quick sigh, she picked up her prosthetic arm and got to work to tightening the clamp back down to hold it securely.


	7. in which Skye is a Sneaky Lil Booger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so busy figuring out how many chapters to put up in one go last week that I forgot to figure out a good time to update with more chapters... So anyways, I'm gonna try to put a new chapter every Monday, (and I have some buffer since this month is one of my busiest months) so hopefully I can actually stick to that schedule. Hopefully being the key word there,

“Are you kids playing nice?” Root asked, leaning in the doorway of Gen and Skye’s room. “Sam said she was pretty sure one of you killed the other it was so quiet.”

“No,” Gen said, from where she was laying on her back, on the floor next to Skye. “But I’m getting ready to kill whoever knocked out the AC.”

“Why don’t you two go to Harold’s,” Root asked. “He’s definitely got AC.”

“Too hot,” Skye said, just as Gen spoke as well.

“Too many rules.”

Skye turned her head, having to push herself up a bit since she was laying on the floor face down, but she stared at Gen. “What rules?”

“All I’m saying is, if you have a little low table in front of your couch, you should be able to put your feet up on it.”

“It’s glass,” Skye said. “Why would you put your feet up on a glass table?”

“I wouldn’t. That’s what I’m saying. Don’t get a glass table for in front of the couch.”

Skye sighed, turning her head so she could lean her forehead against the ground again.

“Look, you two need to go do something,” Root said, crossing her arms. “You’re making the whole apartment hotter with your moping.”

“You just want us gone so you can walk around naked,” Skye said, face against the floor.

“Alright, fine, you caught me,” Root said. “But at least you _can_ go somewhere. So get out of here.”

 

It had been a few weeks since the almost kiss, and neither of them had brought it up. Skye thought of it as a strange dream more than a memory at this point; she already had enough trouble trusting some of her memories, what was one more to be confused about. And Gen had given her no more signs of being interested in anything like that.

Of course, the heatwave didn’t help. The past few days had been disgustingly warm and humid, and walking to Harold’s had made them both overheated and sweaty. So just like the rest of the week, neither of them wanted to be anywhere near each other, even in the cool air that was blasting all the rooms of the apartment.

“Is that a new number?” Skye asked, wandering past the doorway to Harold’s office slash her temporary bedroom on the way to the bathroom. She’d been planning to splash cold water on her face, or maybe just give in and take a shower, but this was more interesting.

He turned, looking at her in surprise. “Yes,” he replied, and Bear came out of the room to greet her. “Wouldn’t you already know if we have a new number or not, Ms. Lark?”

Skye shrugged. “I don’t get told when you’re notified. I really don’t get told anything. It’s a matter of separate, simultaneous processes with shared memory space; I sort of have to know what I’m looking for if I want to know what she’s doing, unless she makes it a part of my processes.”

Harold looked thoughtful, and Skye took the opportunity to scan over what he had pulled up about the number. A scientist it looked like, who worked on genetics and neuroscience. Government contract for the company she worked at, and of course most of everything in the research classified.

“I was going to ask Detective Carter or Detective Fusco to help with this one,” Harold told her, following her gaze back to the computer screen. “John is busy today, and Ms. Shaw is still recovering from Tuesday’s debacle.”

“Can I help?” Skye asked, putting on her best smile.

“Oh, no, Ms. Lark, I wouldn’t want to put you in danger,” Harold replied. “You _or_ Ms. Zhirova, since I know you would pull her into it as well.”

Skye sighed, deflating. There went her entertainment for the day. Gen could at least watch TV. Everything Skye tried to watch, or even read, she always had a memory of seeing it already. Helping a number in this heat wave would be such a challenge, especially if she couldn’t use her arm.

“Perhaps,” Harold said tentatively, “you can help me here.”

Skye brightened. “What can I do?”

“Ah, to start, I could use someone finding out more about Ms. Brighton as I contact the detective,” he said, getting up from his spot in front of the computer.

Skye eyed the keyboard and mouse as she sat down; she’d never used them before, and she really didn’t plan to now. Glancing back to the monitor, all she had to do was reach out, and there was Harold’s computer. He always left an easy way in for just her, knowing she barely understood the point of the mouse. She really didn’t even need the monitor, the Machine able to understand and translate the information straight from the computer into a format Skye understood, but she still enjoyed watching all the windows pop up and go away.

There was nothing else she could find though, beyond what Harold had gotten. The woman was unmarried, and had fallen out of contact from her family. A good recipe for an easy disappearance, if someone wanted to get rid of her.

Harold finished on the phone, so Skye got up to give him his chair back.

“Find anything?” he asked, sitting down to see what she had pulled up.

“Not really. Just put together that she’s perfect for a clean disappearing act if someone was motivated to do so.”

“Yes, that was what I noticed.” He glanced over the information again. “Detective Fusco offered to take this case,” he continued. “Detective Carter apparently has too much paperwork to do thanks to our last number.”

“Hm, are you sure I can’t go help?” Skye asked.

Harold looked her over, the fact she didn’t have her prosthetic attached and probably noting how gross she’d gotten just from walking over there. “Skye, it’s dangerous to do this. This isn’t a game.”

“I know it’s not a _game_ ,” Skye said. “I’m not saying it’s fun to potentially put my life on the line. But at least it’s something to do that’s better than sitting around here reading books I’ve already read. I’ll at least be learning something.”

Harold sighed. “You get a look in your eye just like Ms. Shaw’s when you talk about these things.”

“At least it’s not like Root,” Skye replied, turning to face the doorway

Harold sighed again, she could hear it as she left the little office.

“Hey, Gen,” Skye said as she entered the family room again. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Hm?” Gen replied, fumbling with the remote for a second before she paused the TV.

“Can you get my hair off the back of my neck?”

“Hah, sure,” Gen said, sitting up. “Come over here.”

 

Skye brought the straw of her drink back up to her lips, watching Fusco finally get out of his car. It was disgustingly humid still, but Skye tried to combat it with her cold drink to mild success. Gen was still at Harold’s, at least since the TV was still on; her phone must have been dead, or it would have probably read it was there too. Harold didn’t have many cameras in his apartment, but cameras weren’t the only way to tell where people were.

She probably should have told at least one of them where she was going, but... Harold didn’t need the added worry.

Putting the drink down, Skye fanned herself with her hand. Not even the approaching evening could cool the air apparently, the stagnant air feeling like it was pressing into her skin. It definitely would have been smarter to stay at Harold’s apartment.

But also a hell of a lot more boring.

Who was bold enough to drive up to a Manhattan office in broad daylight in what was obviously a hit squad? They had to be government to have that confidence. Or private security.

“Fusco,” Skye said quietly over the comm. Hopefully she didn’t startle him or Harold too badly. “There’s a hit squad out front, get her out the back.”

“Shaw, aren’t you supposed to be resting,” Fusco replied, making Skye pause.

“Ms. Lark,” Harold said, flabbergasted. “What are you doing?”

Skye looked at the guys leaving the SUV; all fairly well dressed but with all the right wrinkles in the right places that said they had hidden weapons. “I think I’m gonna make a distraction. Wish me luck.”

She pulled her arm out of her backpack, it being the only thing in the bag in the first place, and attached it. And then she ditched her drink and headed towards them at a pace too fast to really qualify as walking.

Throwing her backpack at the first guy to notice her, she ran at the second guy and slammed her metal arm into his midsection. He doubled over, and she was free to spin and kick the first one in the side of the knee; wearing the heavy boots had seemed like such a bad idea on such a hot day, but they were paying off now.

She didn’t stop to watch the guy fall, seeing the third guy coming from behind her in the security camera feed for the building. She spun on her heel, only to get hit across the face with the guys fist, sending her stumbling backwards.

He swore, shaking out his hand, as she tried to blink away the stars in her eyes. Thankfully, she didn’t need to see, at least not with her eyes, to hit him; she slammed her prosthetic fist into his throat just as the stars began to fade.

The three men all stayed just out of her reach as they recovered from the hits, but they had longer arms and legs than her, giving them the advantage when it came to who could reach who first.

Grabbing her prosthetic wrist, she opened the clamp and dropped the arm, maintaining eye contact with the one guy who looked ready to come at her again. Her arm was uncomfortably hot under her fingers from both the heat of the day and the fact she was using it.

He didn’t take the threat seriously enough apparently, because he came in with a gut punch for her. It never met her torso, as she swung the metal arm into the side of his head.

He went down, out cold. And Skye was hit on the left shoulder with something much harder than a fist; the pain was enough to make her see white for a second, and she fell to her knees, trying to process what exactly had happened.

She turned to look at the guy behind her, catching her breath, and found he had his gun pointed in her face. That was almost enough to freeze her sweat, except for the fact it still had the safety on. Shaw didn’t teach her everything to know about guns just for her to fall for a simple trick like that. He must not have wanted to scare any civilians but get her to surrender.

Glancing at the other two guys, she found the one she’d hit in the throat still coughing and the one she’d hit with her detached arm still down on the ground. So this guy was the last one.

Slowly moving her hand to hold her prosthetic just above the elbow, Skye watched his hands on the gun as. No movement towards enabling it to shoot her, so she glanced down to reattach her disgustingly warm arm. With a standoff like this, she would probably want the arm attached now. It could act as a shield if he did decide to use the gun.

Just as she got it in place, he kicked her in the side, toppling her into falling on the hard metal and jarring whatever was wrong with her shoulder. She curled up a second too late for the foot coming at her again, taking the kick hard in the stomach. Grown men could really pack a punch when they actually hit the right spot.

Belatedly, she tried to grab his ankle, to keep him from kicking her again, but he easily pulled his leg out from her real hand’s sloppy hold.

“What the hell are you doing?” a thankfully familiar voice said, and the man backed off; Skye was starting to see black spots in her vision from the pain in her shoulder and stomach.

“She started it,” the guy with the gun replied.

“You expect me to believe a 16 year old started a fight with all three of you?” Carter said, bending down to help Skye up. “Look at her, she barely comes up to your shoulders. No, you guys can think up a better excuse down at the station.”

Detective Carter helped Skye over to her car, holding her real arm as Skye tried to stand up straight despite the pain in her abdomen and shoulder. “Thank you,” Skye said as Carter held the car door open for her. There were other officers taking care of the hit squad behind them, so Carter got in the driver’s seat.

“Oh, Finch is going to have a field day with you,” she said, shaking her head as she started the car. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him as worried as he was when he called to tell me you were going to get yourself killed. “

“They were going to hurt ... the woman,” Skye replied, putting a hand on her shoulder to try and get it to stop hurting. It didn’t really help, but it wasn’t worse, so she left it there.

“You could’ve just let Fusco do his job,” Carter replied. “No, no I’m not going to get into this with you. Harold can lecture you. I’ve already got a kid to lecture.”

“They would’ve chased them. Made it harder to get away. I didn’t do it for no reason,” Skye tried to say, but Carter just waved her words away.

“Save it for Harold,” she told her.

 

Harold hadn’t completely explained why they were headed to the safe house besides something about his apartment being off the map, but what Gen did know was that Skye was supposed to be showing up there any minute. And when she did show up, she was going to get a stern talking to.

“Skye!” Gen cried, running to help Detective Carter with her and completely forgetting anything to do with her stern talking to. Skye looked seriously worse for wear, head down and practically hanging from the Detective’s shoulder. There was a forming bruise across Skye’s cheek that was going to match quite well with the fading green one on her upper arm.

“Thank you so much, Detective,” Harold said, also approaching but letting Gen take Skye.

“She doesn’t have a concussion or anything,” the Detective said as she passed Skye off to Gen’s hold. “I checked. Did Fusco get out okay?”

Gen didn’t bother to pay attention to the rest of the conversation, leading Skye over to the couch. Skye smiled at her as she sat her down, though it turned into a wince as Gen bumped her prosthetic arm. That was strange, Skye couldn’t feel anything with her arm.

“What’s hurt?” Gen asked, just as Skye started to unclamp the prosthetic.

“Somethin’ feels wrong with my shoulder,” Skye said, not even bothering to catch the arm as it hit the couch between them. She seemed a little out of it, hopefully not from pain. “I’m gonna make my arm stop moving, ‘cause that makes it worse.”

Gingerly, Gen grabbed the discarded arm and put it up on the counter behind the couch. “Is it broken?” Gen asked. “I mean, your shoulder.”

“I dunno. I never broke this one before,” Skye replied. She still hadn’t leaned back against the couch, sitting stiffly upright on the cushion. “Oh, and thanks for tying my hair up earlier.”

“Maybe I should get Harold to take you to a doctor or something,” Gen said, wanting to help Skye relax but also not even knowing where to begin.

But Skye made a face at her proposal. “I hate doctors. And explaining everything. ‘S not worth it.” She pushed herself up off the couch, leaning heavily on her hand where it was on the arm of the couch. “I’m just gonna, try to lay down.”

“Wait, Skye,” Gen said, just as the front door of the safe house opened again.

“I don’t understand,” the woman with Fusco was saying as he held the door open for her. “I don’t have any enemies. Why would there be a threat to my life?”

Skye froze, staring at the woman almost... wistfully? Gen couldn’t quite place the emotion on Skye’s face, since she’d never seen it before.

“Well, there’s somethin’ happenin’ in your life that’s leading to dangerous things,” Fusco replied. “We’ve already seen it.”

“Seen what?” the woman asked, incredulous. “What is _so_ dangerous? Oh my god, what happened to you?”

Skye looked down at the floor upon being addressed, seeming like she wanted to retreat. It made her seem her actual height, which was shorter than everyone in the room, something Gen had never seen happen before. Hurriedly, Gen put her hands on Skye’s hips, trying to get her attention and guide her back to where she had said she wanted to go without touching anything she knew to be damaged. “Come on,” Gen said encouragingly, just to Skye. “Let’s get you some ice.”

Skye didn’t resist, avoiding eye contact with any of them, and Harold stepped in. “She was trying to help you,” he told the woman. “She was keeping the men coming after you busy while Detective Fusco brought you here.”

“Skye,” Gen said, helping her awkwardly walk to the little bedroom of the place. “What’s wrong? Is something hurting worse? Should I see if Shaw can come check you?”

“I thought she was someone else for a second,” Skye said, voice almost too quiet for Gen to hear properly. “I thought... I thought she was somebody... else.” Her eyebrows were drawn together so tightly, whoever she’d thought the woman was clearly very important to her.

“Oh.” Gen started to rub her side, only for her to stiffen and wince. Gen immediately quit, instead focusing on letting Skye sit on the bed.

“I wanted it to be someone else,” Skye said, struggling to lay back on the pillows. Gen helped her, trying not to touch her hurt shoulder as she supported her. “But she’s not the same at all.”

“Who did you want it to be?” Gen asked, since it seemed like Skye wanted to talk about it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Skye replied. “It couldn’t happen anyways.

“That’s okay,” Gen told her, helping her move one of the pillows behind her. “Sometimes we just hope for things, even if it can’t happen.”

Skye sighed, closing her eyes, so Gen took it as a cue to go find some ice packs or frozen peas or something.

Aptly, the safe house was well equipped with ice packs and other first aid supplies, so Gen took as much of it as she could back into the room with her. Skye was staring out the window when she got back, looking pensive. Gently, Gen guided her hand to one of the ice packs she’d wrapped up in a towel, and Skye glanced over at everything she’d brought before processing what to do with the thing in her hand.

“I brought another ice pack, for anything else that hurts. Or if you just want to cool down,” Gen told her once she’d put the ice pack to her shoulder, right next to where her prosthetic attached.

“Can you put it on my stomach,” Skye asked, obviously unable to let go of the one on her shoulder without dropping it.

“Yeah.” Gen climbed up onto the bed, sitting next to Skye and carefully placing the second ice pack, also wrapped in a towel, over Skye’s abdomen.

“Mm, move my shirt,” Skye told her, moving her arm in an attempt at a gesture without moving her hand. “I can’t feel it.”

Gen pulled her shirt up, and almost gasped at the discoloring starting to appear across Skye’s midsection. “Skye—”

“I got kicked,” Skye said simply. “Can you put the ice on it?”

“Right.” Tentatively, Gen put the ice back back over the bruising. “Anything else I should know about?”

Skye shook her head. “Though some ice on my cheek would probably be the smart thing to do. But it would be kinda hard to hold.”

Gen shook her head, laying down beside Skye. At least she was okay, as in, at least all her limbs that had been attached were still attached, and she wasn’t outright bleeding.

“I was hoping she would be like my... Joanna,” Skye said, surprising her. Gen didn’t move, not wanting to startle her out of this. “But, that’s kind of stupid isn’t it. Joanna is gone.”

“It’s not stupid,” Gen replied, running her fingers over the seam that went down the side of Skye’s jeans. “You miss her.”

“I don’t know how to miss someone,” Skye said.

“Sure you do,” Gen told her. “How do you get when you don’t get to see Robin for a few days?”

“Like I should go see her. And play with her.”

“You miss her, Skye. How do you feel when you think about Joanna?”

“Like I’d really like to see her. But she wouldn’t be able to pick me up anymore, I’m too big now. Everything would be weird and different. And it doesn’t matter, because she can’t come back. So it doesn’t matter.”

Gen sighed, belatedly realizing she had been a little worried about Joanna being an ex or something. But it just sounded like she’d been like an aunt when Skye was a child. Why had she even been worried...?

“What was she like?” Gen asked softly, trying to interrupt her own thoughts.

“She was nice. Nicer than anyone else I’d ever met. And she would always wait for me, no matter what. Even when it took me all day to figure out what she was trying to help me understand.” Skye paused, and it sounded like she dropped the ice pack she’d been holding. So Gen pushed herself up, trying to see where it landed; it must have slipped out of her hand.

Easily finding it on the opposite side of Skye’s legs, Gen started to offer it to her again, only to realize Skye was wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.

“I miss her,” Skye said, voice quiet. “She’s my favorite person.”

Gen leaned on the pillows beside Skye, meeting her gaze. “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

“Me too,” Skye said, letting her head fall back against the pillows. “Can I have the ice pack back now?”

“Yeah, here,” Gen said, putting the pack in her hand.

“And... don’t leave me,” Skye said as she replaced the ice pack against her shoulder. “You’re one of my favorite people too.” She closed her eyes again, taking a deep breath; she didn’t seem as much in pain as she had been, thankfully.

“I’ll be right here,” Gen told her, getting comfortable on the pillows. “Except when Harold comes in to lecture you, then I might have to find an excuse to leave ‘cause otherwise it’s gonna be kinda super awkward.”

Skye snorted. “Okay.”

Putting her arm over the pillows behind Skye, Gen had managed to arrange herself into having a perfect view out the window of the sunset, the sky just barely starting to turn orangey yellow. The apartment was nice and cool compared to how hot it had to be outside, and seeming to nod off, Skye’s head leaned against Gen’s arm. Before the ice pack on her shoulder could slip, Gen grabbed her hand and held it in place for her.

 

Skye woke up after a bit, once the sky was dark and Gen was just starting to debate how much she really wanted to sit in the dark without anything else to do. She’d been watching the sunset, but without that, there really wasn’t much to do with Skye out of it.

“Hey,” Gen said, watching Skye lift her head up and blink confusedly. “Welcome back.”

“You got any snacks?” Skye asked blearily, starting to move her hand  under Gen’s before realizing where it was. “I’m starving.”

Gen snorted. “I could go find some food, if you’re nice to me,” she said, letting go of Skye’s hand.

“I’m always nice to you,” Skye replied. “I mean, I try to be.”

“Yeah, I know,” Gen said, getting her arm out from behind Skye. “So, if Shaw has to spend a bunch of time here, you think there’s some really good food stashed somewhere?”

“You know that cabinet that’s right by where the counter makes a corner,” Skye asked, watching Gen get off the bed. “But there’s no evidence of the corner existing when you open the cabinets?”

“Oh my god. That’s genius.”

“It opens on the other side,” Skye said. “Also, there might be some guns in there too.”

“It wouldn’t be Shaw’s secret stash if there weren’t guns involved,” Gen replied, rolling her eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

It didn’t sound like anyone else was really in the apartment, or at least, no one was moving around anymore. Harold was gone, and the woman they’d rescued was nowhere to be seen. Gen didn’t think too hard about it, going over to the corner of the counter and crouching down to figure out how to get the siding to reveal the fake cabinet.

“Don’t move,” the woman Gen had assumed was gone said. Gen glanced up at her, finding a gun in her face. She was really starting to hate this side effect of hanging out with Skye.

“Look, I don’t care if you leave,” Gen said, raising her hands above her head. “I don’t really care what you do or don’t do regarding what Harold says. I’m not really a part of this whole thing.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Trying to help my friend. Who’s gonna start wondering why I’m not coming back.”

“Stand up,” the woman said, gesturing with the gun. Gen obeyed, keeping her hands up. “I’m leaving, and since you ‘don’t care,’ I’m going to take this as well.” She grabbed Skye’s prosthetic where it was sitting on the counter behind the couch, and for a second she struggled, not seeming to realize how heavy it was.

“N-no, you can’t take that,” Gen said hurriedly. “That’s Skye’s. She needs that.”

“I thought you didn’t care what I did,” the woman said, raising the gun again.

Gen struggled to swallow, trying to just get her breathing back to normal while there was a _gun_ pointed at her. How did Skye always seem so calm?

“Gen, I changed my mind,” Skye said sleepily, leaving the bedroom. “You want like, real dinner—?” She’d apparently seen what was going on, cutting herself off.

“Skye, uh, go back to bed,” Gen said, trying to figure out a way to get Skye’s arm back without risking the gun.

“Gen,” Skye said, and the woman turned to her, pointing the gun at her. Skye seemed perfectly relaxed, looking over the woman. “Trust me?”

Gen stared at her, confused. Trust her what? She hadn’t said anything to warrant Gen’s doubt yet.

“Harold,” Skye said, almost looking disappointed. “We found your perpetrator. Also, safety’s on so grab the arm, Gen.” With just the last part, she spoke almost too fast for Gen to catch what she was telling her, but the second it clicked, Gen lunged at the woman.

She barely had a grip on the arm, clearly not ready for the weight or balance of it, making it terribly easy for Gen to get hold of it and pull it right out of her hand. She ran back over to Skye with it, and Skye grabbed the back of her shirt.

“I didn’t really want to shoot any kids,” the woman said, messing with something on the gun before pointing it at them again. “But you’re both far more trouble than you’re worth.”

Skye pulled Gen backwards, getting in front of her despite the fact the top of her head barely came up to Gen’s eyes. “Look, you can still leave,” Gen said, holding Skye’s prosthetic arm close. “We don’t really care if you go. We just wanted the arm back.”

“Besides, I already told Harold you’re the perpetrator,” Skye said. “Even if you kill us, they still know, and it’ll just get added to your list of crimes.”

The gun lowered, the woman thinking about what Skye had said. And then it came back up with a bang, just as Skye turned to try and push Gen out of the way. Gen fell, yelping as Skye’s arm where she was holding against her chest lurched and something in her upper arm sparked with sharp pain before it started throbbing.

Skye got up, staring at Gen’s arm in shock for a second before seeming to shut down. Smoothly, Skye turned back to the woman, who seemed a little stunned at what had just happened, and ran the few steps over to her. She grabbed her wrist, squeezing it until she dropped the gun and then ran her elbow into the woman’s midsection. As soon as the woman’s head was down far enough, Skye pulled her into a tight, one armed headlock.

“Skye?” Gen said shakily, sitting up just enough to see what had happened to her arm. Skye’s prosthetic fell to the floor off her lap, but she couldn’t even bother to look at it, not when she was realizing she was bleeding from her arm.

“Ms. Lark,” Harold said sharply, just as the front door closed. “I think you’ve done enough.”

Gen glanced up, to see Skye had completely subdued the woman, who was limp where Skye held her.

“Skye,” Harold said, when Skye didn’t move. “Did you hear me?”

“He killed her. So I can do the same to him.”

 Gen stared at Skye; where did she think she was?

“Skye, look at Genrika,” Harold said, coming around the counter to see the both of them. He met Gen’s gaze for a second, and he looked worried. That was enough to make Gen nervous. But Skye looked at her as Harold commanded, and her eyebrows came together in confusion.

“It’s not who you thought it was, is it?” Harold said.

Skye shook her head and dropped the woman, who fell to the floor completely passed out. Skye’s arm was red from scratches from the woman’s struggle to escape.

“Detective Fusco will be here soon to take care of Ms. Brighton,” Harold said. “Ms. Zhirova, are you alright?”

Gen glanced down at her arm, gingerly pulling her hand away from where the blood was coming from to see if she could glean anything from the injury. She, however, knew nothing about bullet wounds. At least, not that she could remember right then.

Skye crouched down next to her, gently pulling her hand further away and examining the wound. “It’s through,” she said. “You just need some bandages. Probably.”

Gen looked at Skye trying not to make an incredulous face at her. “Probably?”

“Uh, Shaw’s better at this,” Skye told her, rocking back on her heels before standing up. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

 

“Skye,” Harold said, just as Skye sat down to start eating. Gen was in the bedroom with her own dinner, probably alternating between watching whatever she had put on her laptop and dozing off thanks to the pain med Shaw had told them to give her. “We need to talk.”

Skye debated between putting her fork down and giving him her full attention and actually getting to eat some of the food that she’d waited on for what felt like so long. She’d had to wait for Fusco to take the lady away and a phone call to Shaw about Gen’s arm before she could even get the food, and now that she finally had it, Harold had to talk. It didn’t help that everywhere she’d bruised still ached, leaving her patience worn thin.

“Go ahead and eat. I simply wish to speak to you about what happened with this number,” he said, as if he could see right through her. “I’m not very happy you snuck out earlier since you got hurt, but... I will acknowledge you tried to do it in a way that would keep Ms. Zhirova from getting hurt, which was the right thing to do. But risking yourself so needlessly when Detective Fusco could have handled the situation?”

“I thought they were going to hurt her. Brighton,” Skye said around bites of food. “And I thought... she was like Joanna.”

Harold sighed. “I’m afraid we all did, and it cost Ms. Zhirova.”

“With the information I had at the time, it seemed like the best thing to do,” Skye said.

“And later, when you strangled Ms. Brighton?” Harold asked.

Skye paused. “I got confused.”

Harold took her hand where it was by her plate. “I know. But what happens if you get confused and I don’t get there in time? I want you to ask yourself that. And if that means perhaps you shouldn’t work with the numbers we get until you sort out what causes your misplacement in time.”

Skye put her fork down and pushed her plate back so she could set her chin on the table. Suddenly she wasn’t so hungry.

“I know it’s a lot,” Harold said. “And it takes time to consider. But please, reflect on it.”


	8. in which Gen Has to Go Back to School

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also known as the chapter in which Skye Doesn't Actually Know What Dating Is, Can Someone Please Explain How Human Relationships Work to Her,  
> because, I mean, if you look at who she lives with, she's barely got good examples of how to be a functional human being, much less what a relationship is

“Alright, kid,” Shaw said, putting the last bag down by the bed. “If this isn’t the last thing, I’m quitting.”

“Thanks, Shaw,” Gen said dryly. There were three duffel bags on the floor of the dorm room, something both Skye and Gen knew was hardly a heavy load for Shaw. “I know it was a lot of work to carry a single bag at a time.”

“It was the least I could do,” Shaw replied just as dryly with a shrug, getting Gen to smile. “Since you’ve got one arm in a sling and all.”

Gen made a face, touching the fabric of the sling, and Skye shoved her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt, looking out the little window of the room again. She hated being reminded of that injury, of her hand in its happening.

“Hey,” Shaw said easily, “at least you’ve got a way outta gym class for another week or so.”

“Unfortunately, I really don’t have ‘gym’ anymore,” Gen said, but there was a slight laugh with her words. “Since, you know, I’m a junior in high school now.”

“Well, sounds like you’re settled in then,” Shaw said, sounding like she was ruffling Gen’s hair. “See you around, kid.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Shaw,” Gen said, sincerely this time. “Come and visit more often than last year. Or else I’m gonna show up on your doorstep for Thanksgiving whether you like it or not.”

“Ha, I’ll do my best,” Shaw replied. “Hey, other kid. Let’s get out of Miss I’m-a-big-junior-now’s hair.”

“Actually,” Gen said to Skye when she looked up at them. “Can I talk with you, alone?”

Skye nodded, trying to ignore the twist in her gut at her tone. Since Harold had spoken to her, she hadn’t been able to help any numbers. If Gen had to talk to her, would it mean she wouldn’t get to see Gen anymore?

Gen waited for Shaw to fully clear the doorway before she even approached Skye, using her good hand to gently coax Skye’s real hand from her pocket and holding it.

“Um, I was wondering,” Gen said, her voice a twinge nervous, “if you’d visit? It doesn’t have to be when Shaw does, though if that’s easiest, you could do that too.”

Skye stared at her, at a loss for words as she realized Gen wasn’t angry at her for getting her shot.

“I mean,” Gen continued hurriedly, “you obviously don’t have to. I know I’m not as tough as you or apparently as good a surveillance or anything—"

“I’ll visit,” Skye told her excitedly. “I’ll definitely visit. I don’t care if you’re not the same as me, I just like it that you can keep up, because you’re my friend.”

Gen laughed, a little weirdly, but it still counted. “Yeah, um, yeah, we’re friends. I don’t know why I didn’t think you’d visit.”

“I thought you were mad at me again,” Skye said, all the things she’d wanted to say to Gen over the past few weeks spilling out of her, “since you didn’t seem to want to talk much. I thought you were mad because I got you shot in the safe house. Which I’m really sorry about. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Gen looked astonished. “No, I wasn’t mad about that,” she said. “I wasn’t even mad. I just... had to think about some stuff. Like how summer was pretty much over and I... I wasn’t sure I had everything I needed for another school year.”

“Well, if you need anything else, I can get it. Or I can get Shaw to get it,” Skye said. “And then I can visit more. Whatever you want.”

Gen made a face, an emotion Skye couldn’t quite identify. It wasn’t quite nervous, but it wasn’t exasperated either. “Um, what if I want...” She glanced down, seeming unsure.

Skye looked up at her patiently, waiting for her to finish the sentence. She would probably wait there forever if Gen asked.

Surprising her, Gen didn’t finish the sentence, instead tentatively putting her hand behind Skye’s head to guide her into a real kiss.

“Hey, Skye, she’s being nice enough to kiss you,” Shaw said, causing Gen to jerk away. Skye could just see over Gen’s shoulder, Shaw was leaning against the doorframe looking bored. “Least you can do is put your hands on her hips. Or her ass. Depends on how forward you want to be, I guess.”

Gen’s face was turning pink, like she was embarrassed, but Skye was exhilarated. She put her hands on Gen’s hips, moving closer to her in hopes for another kiss. “Shaw,” Gen said, hand still behind Skye’s head, “get out.”

“Alright,” Shaw said, raising her hands. “I’ll be out front. Skye, you’re finding your own way back if you guys take too long.”

“Kay,” Skye said, just as Gen leaned in again. She tried to focus on where her hands were this time, but it was _hard_. Gen knew what she was doing, and Skye just wanted to melt against her lips.

With a slight sigh, Gen pulled away just enough to speak. “So, um, maybe this will give you a better incentive to visit?”

“Yeah,” Skye said, a little breathless. “Definitely.”

\---

Gen had been hearing talk all day about a mysterious black motorcycle in the parking lot; everyone was trying to speculate about which of the teachers it had to be, and as much as Gen wanted to join in, she also couldn’t believe it was any of the teachers’.

So when her roommate Danielle, a reddish-brown haired girl, came running to find her out on the lawn, somehow, she wasn’t particularly surprised.

“There’s someone in our room,” she said, sounding quite anxious. “Long dark hair, also how did she get in? Did you give her a key or something?”

From the sound of it, Root had come to visit since she was the only one with a motorcycle like the one everyone was talking about. Sighing, she packed up her books and laptop and headed back to the dorm building.

“Do you know who she is?” Danielle asked, following Gen at a much less enthusiastic pace. “How’d she get in?”

“I have a pretty good idea who she is,” Gen said, keeping her herself that even she could easily pick any of the sad locks at this school. She was trying not to make Danielle more anxious.

Gen opened the door to their room, and it wasn’t Root. But she definitely, immediately recognized who was on her bed, head buried in pillows and a gloved hand with just a bit of exposed, metallic wrist from the sleeve of her leather jacket, holding the pillow over her face in place.

“Skye,” Gen said, kicking one of the legs of the bedframe. Skye practically threw the pillow that had been over her face, springing up and drawing a knife from somewhere on her body. As soon as she saw Gen though, she put the knife away, practically grinning.

“Hey, took you long enough,” she said simply. From behind herself, Gen could practically feel Danielle’s anxiety only grow; she couldn’t read Skye’s emotions as easily as Gen could, making this interaction probably look a lot more terrifying than it actually was.

“Did you steal Root’s bike? She’s gonna be pissed,” Gen said, crossing her arms. “What are you doing here, anyways?”

“I didn’t take her bike,” Skye said haughtily, getting off the bed and straightening her clothes. “That one’s mine. They’re different. And you told me to visit. I’m visiting.”

“Skye, it’s Thursday and you’re scaring my roommate,” Gen said dryly. “I meant visit over the weekends or holidays or something.”

Skye pushed her lips together just enough to qualify as a pout. “I’ll just leave then,” she said. “Bye, Gen’s roommate. Sorry for scaring you.”

“God, you’ve been spending way too much time with Root,” Gen said, catching Skye by the waist before she could try and squeeze past her. Skye was just small enough to make it seem like she would be easy to pick up, but with her prosthetic arm and the amount of muscle she had, she was barely light enough for Gen to stop in her tracks.

“Anyways,” Gen said, glancing back to her roommate, “Danielle, this is Skye. Skye, Danielle. She’s my friend from the city I told you might come to visit our next three day weekend. I’m afraid she doesn’t quite grasp the concept of school taking time.”

Danielle smiled nervously, waving a hello at Skye; in return, Skye gave her a fake smile that she also definitely picked up from Root. Gen was a little surprised to realize Skye was technically shorter than Danielle, but with how the two of them held themselves, Skye seemed taller.

“Alright, Skye,” Gen said, pulling her around, “let’s give Danielle her room back. We can sort this out outside.”

“You wanna see my bike?” Skye said as Gen guided her out into the hallway.

“Why are you actually here,” Gen asked, voice quiet as they passed a few gawkers in the hall. “I know you know how school works.”

Skye hesitated, and then completely dodged the question. “Are you sure you don’t want to see the bike? I modded it a bit. Partially so everything could be controlled by my right hand, but also to make it cooler. Also, the town here is _really_ small. It took like no time to drive through.”

“Skye,” Gen hissed, pulling her into the stairwell. “Why are you here?”

Skye paused again. “... got your number,” she finally said, voice quiet.

“What? Is Shaw here?”

“No, _I_ got your number.” Skye said, staring at Gen with wide eyes. “She called _me_.”

“I thought you weren’t helping with numbers still.”

“I’m not. I still don’t know how to fix myself. I don’t know why she picked me.”

“But that means I’m in danger,” Gen said, trying to understand everything Skye had told her.

“Or you’re the perpetrator,” Skye replied.


	9. in which Gen's Number is Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back to actual regular length chapters,  
> (and if anyone wants a neat song for the very end, check [this](https://youtu.be/rNl82r3IStQ) out?)

Watching Gen where she was sitting on the curb, chin on her knees, Skye laid forwards on her bike, putting her arms on the handlebars and resting her chin on them. They hadn’t come to a solution in the amount of time they’d been sitting there, Gen refusing to leave school with her, and Skye refusing to call any of the adults, including Shaw.

“I’m just saying,” Gen began to say.

“I’m not calling them. Shaw could just pull you out of school just as easily as Harold. And then what if I’m not even allowed to help because sometimes my brain malfunctions?”

“Your brain doesn’t malfunction,” Gen said, surprising her. “Well, it does. But so does everyone else’s. It’s not that weird.”

“But how they handle it doesn’t seem to work for me,” Skye told her.

Gen leaned back with a sigh, propping herself up on her hands.

“Why can’t we just go home?” Skye asked, closing her eyes.

“I can’t just miss school without repercussions. I say, stay here until something seems fishy.”

Hearing Gen move, Skye opened her eyes to watch her get to her feet and dust herself off.

“Look, it’s Thursday. I gotta get my homework done for tomorrow. We can figure this out later.”

“I’m gonna stay,” Skye said. “Here, with you. Just in case.”

Gen had an expression that said Skye wasn’t wrong. Except... “Where are you gonna stay? I’ve got a roommate. Who’s so nervous she was probably three seconds away from reporting you if I hadn’t said I knew who you were.”

Skye shrugged. “I been in worse situations,” she said easily. “I’ve got Harold’s limitless bank accounts at my disposal after all.”

Gen pursed her lips, apparently not liking that answer. “Come on,” she said after a second. “Let’s go lie to my roommate.”

 

\---

“Hello,” Joanna said as she entered Skye’s room. “You like to look out the window?”

Skye stared at her, climbing off the little chair she’d managed to get on top of the bookcase and crouching to be ready to jump down and run if Joanna came any closer. She vaguely remembered that Joanna was nice from before, when she didn’t have a body, similarly to how she vaguely remembered what it was like to be clean, but the memories were inconsequential if the other doctors were going to come in.

“No one else is going to bother you today,” Joanna told her gently. “Just me.”

To Skye’s surprise, no one else came in like she said, and Joanna simply sat down at the child-sized table in the middle of the room, putting some papers down. She worked on the papers, barely giving Skye a second glance.

She couldn’t stay up there on the bookcase, it was too weird; to have an adult in the room but not trying to get her attention or do something to her? What did it mean? So she pushed the chair off the bookcase and climbed down, diving under her bed when Joanna glanced up at the clatter.

But again, she didn’t do anything. Didn’t punish her for throwing the chair or for hiding under the bed.

Skye stretched out on the floor, touching the metal legs of the bed frame and trying to figure out what was so interesting in those papers that Joanna was looking at.

Well, she wasn’t going to be able to figure it out from over here. But she wasn’t ready to leave her hiding spot yet. What if as soon as she went over there, it was a trap? And then the other doctors would come in and force her into a corner with the collar and hold her down to do their tests. Last time not even biting had gotten them to stop from stabbing her with the needles.

She curled up under the bed, keeping her back to the wall and watching Joanna go through the stack of papers.

\---

 

Making Gen look up from where she was sitting at her desk, Skye sighed, appearing asleep. But she hadn’t stirred when Gen shook her shoulder earlier, telling Gen she was definitely not sleeping. She could only hope the memory wasn’t a bad one since Danielle was still in the room. She hadn’t exactly been happy to help hide Skye in there, but she had been sympathetic to their made-up dilemma of Skye running away from home because she was outed.

At least Gen hadn’t really lied when she said Skye wouldn’t be here for long; if her number came up, whatever was in store was going to happen soon.

She couldn’t figure out who would be after her. It wasn’t like there was much of her past left to catch up with her, the people she’d bugged when she was living in the city couldn’t know where she’d gone, Harold had promised. And Shaw said HR was dead.

The only contenders that made sense were the people she’d run into trouble with when she was spending time with Skye. Did that mean Skye being there was the reason she was in danger?

No, Skye had gotten her number before she’d come. If Skye was putting her in danger, her number could only have come up if Skye was already here. Or... had that been why the Machine called Skye? Because Skye would be the one to put her in danger?

That didn’t make sense either; with what Gen knew of the thing, it would have known Skye would immediately come up to see her at getting her number. So Skye was an important part of this, hopefully in that she was the person to stop it all.

Gen glanced at her again, biting her lip as she thought about it all. And then she turned back to her computer, pulling up a browser window. What had Skye said that woman’s name was? Brighton? At least Gen could start searching her. It seemed like a far cry, but she had to start somewhere.

So much for getting her homework done.

 

\---

She’d promised herself she’d only rest her eyes for a second, her eyelids had gotten so heavy. But when she opened her eyes again, there was food on the table and the stack of papers was much smaller. But Joanna was still there, quietly working.

She wanted the food, and she wanted to know what Joanna was doing, so her answer was clear. Tentatively crawling out from under the bed, she moved slowly and quietly to try and keep Joanna from looking at her.

Joanna glanced up when she grabbed the sandwich off the plate, and Skye immediately ducked, holding the sandwich close and trying to use the little table as cover as she watched the door for any sign this was a trap.

“It’s okay,” Joanna said gently. “The food is for you.”

Skye peeked over the tabletop at her, glancing between her and the door. The shock collar hadn’t done anything to her yet at least.

Joanna smiled at her patiently, so Skye sat down on the floor there, keeping an eye on the door as she started to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Joanna was nice.

Skye reached for the apple slices on the tray, and Joanna didn’t seem to notice, so she got up to sit in the chair that was beside her, making it easier to reach them. Now she could see what Joanna was working on too; it just looked like boring paperwork though, the pages all full of text. She wasn’t even using the crayons she’d spread out at the table either.

Skye started to reach for the crayons, liking the look of the red one, but something made a muffled clatter in the observation room, and Skye flinched backwards, hiding behind the table again and staring at the door. She glanced at Joanna, trying to glean some sort of information about what was happening.

Joanna looked confused and worried, staring at the big mirror on the wall with the door. Whatever happened, it wasn’t a part of her plan at least, so Skye got up, tentatively sitting back down in the chair to finish her apple slices.

“It’s okay.” Joanna leaned over and gently smoothed some of her mess of hair back out of her face. Belatedly, Skye dodged away, getting off the chair again to get out of her reach, and Joanna got up, making Skye seriously think about bolting under the bed again. But instead of coming towards her, Joanna went to the door, swiping her keycard in the electronic lock to open it.

For a second, Skye could just barely hear her voice, and then the door shut again and it was silent in her room. She kept eating her apple slices, looking at the crayons and papers again. One of the papers had images on them, outlines of the human form.

She ran out of slices, so she sat there for a few seconds, kicking her legs and trying to figure out what she wanted to do next. She liked the crayons in the past, and making pictures for herself, but she’d broken most of the old ones by accident and one of the doctors said she wasn’t allowed to have any more because she was a monster, and that’s why she had to wear the collar too. Maybe that was what happened in the observation room. She’d reached for the crayon, and someone knew she wasn’t supposed to have them.

But Joanna had put these out, so maybe she wasn’t a monster. Or, maybe Joanna didn’t know. She didn’t want Joanna to know.

The door opened, and Skye readied to run back to her bed, but it was just Joanna again. In silent question, Skye pointed at the crayons on the table.

“Yeah, those are for you too,” Joanna said. “Do you need paper?”

Skye didn’t respond, staring at the crayons. There were twelve of them, in the colors of a rainbow plus black, white, brown, and grey. Just like her old ones.

Again, Skye pointed at them, kicking her heels against the floor.

“Is there something wrong with them?” Joanna asked, concerned. “I’m afraid they threw away the old ones, since almost all of them were broken and beyond dull.”

Skye shook her head, playing with her bottom lip. “... ‘cause I’m’monster.”

“What?” Joanna asked, definitely worried this time.

Skye shrunk down in her seat. Joanna didn’t know, and now she ruined it.

“Sweetheart,” Joanna said, sitting down again and putting her hand in front of Skye on the table. “You are not a monster. Did one of the other doctors tell you that?”

Skye nodded, staring at Joanna’s hand.

“Well, they were wrong. Come on, let’s color,” Joanna said, pulling one of her papers out from the pile and turning it over to the blank side as she slid it in front of Skye. “It seemed like you liked coloring before.”

Skye nodded, tentatively reaching for the red crayon again. There was no noise in the observation room this time, so Skye grabbed it, staring at its untouched point.

“What are you going to draw?” Joanna asked.

Skye shrugged, starting to make triangles on the page.

\---

 

“Gen?” Skye said groggily, trying to find where her prosthetic arm had gotten buried in the blankets. She was trying not to freak out Gen’s roommate, and it definitely seemed like she would freak out if she found out Skye was missing an arm.

“I took your arm,” Gen said hurriedly, coming over beside the bed. “You looked like you were about to lay on it, so I grabbed it. Also, Danielle’s at the library.”

Skye let herself fall from how she had herself propped up on her elbow back onto the bed, dizzy from moving while her mind was still catching up.

“Are you okay?” Gen asked, leaning over her.

“Disoriented,” Skye said, touching her own cheek.

Gen laid down on the bed next to her, propping her head up with her hand. With her other hand, Gen touched Skye’s jaw, getting her to turn and look at her. “Where’d you go?”

“A better time than last time,” she said, appreciating the light bluish grey color of Gen’s eyes. “Not one of my best, but... it’s on the way.” Gen’s hand wandered down her neck, but her touches were so light Skye almost missed them.

“What was it last time, to be so bad?” Gen asked softly, her fingers finding the fading scar on the side of Skye’s neck. It was from the shock collar, and she supposed she shouldn’t be bothered by it anymore. But it still felt bad in her gut, and Shaw had always told her to listen to her gut.

“Don’t,” Skye said, having a little trouble finding Gen’s hand as she tried to remember what hand was still attached. “Don’t touch there...”

“Right, I’m sorry,” Gen said, pulling her hand away. “You said it brings up bad memories.”

“They put a shock collar on me,” Skye blurted out. “That’s from the shocks.”

Gen’s eyebrows came together in concern. “Who? Not... not Shaw and them?”

“No,” Skye said, closing her eyes. “The people that made me.”

“Your parents?” Gen asked, sounding disgusted.

Skye shook her head. She didn’t really want to talk about it anymore.

Gen sighed, running her fingers over the shaved part of Skye’s hair instead. Skye opened her eyes again, just as Gen started to move; she pushed herself half up to press a kiss to Skye’s cheek, and before she could move back away from her, Skye put her arm around her waist.

“One more?” she asked trying to imitate some of Root’s melodramatic pleas. “And then I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

Gen half laughed, and leaned down again, and Skye turned, catching her lips with her own in a slightly sloppy kiss. Gen rolled with it though, using one hand to steady Skye’s head as she pulled her into a deeper kiss. She wished she had her prosthetic so she could pull Gen closer, but at the same time was glad she didn’t have to worry about accidentally hurting Gen with it.

“Oh my god,” Danielle said, forcing Gen into the crime of leaving Skye’s lips. “We need a system if you’re gonna have sex in here.”

Startled, Gen sat up, turning to the doorway while trying to get her hair out of her face. “We—we weren’t—”

“Look, I can just go back to the library until it closes,” Danielle said, holding her free hand up in a clear ‘stop’ gesture. “Next time, leave a... you know what, I don’t care what, just put something on the door.”

“Okay,” Gen replied awkwardly.

The door shut and locked, and Gen glanced at Skye, her cheeks turning red. “We weren’t gonna... do anything...”

Skye almost laughed at her expression, she seemed so embarrassed. “Clearly not,” she said, pushing herself up to sit beside Gen.

“I mean, you didn’t want to... did you?”

Skye shrugged. “I’m definitely not interested in sex the same way... like Shaw and Root are. I don’t know how to describe it, but if you wanted to, I’d gladly do it. But I’ve got no real drive on my own.”

Gen looked thoughtful, but she didn’t say anything else, so Skye figured she should go back to their conversation.

“Anyways,” Skye said. “Sorta glad she left, ‘cause her phone and stuff has old Samaritan tech running on it still. And it kinda hurts. She needs to update.”

Gen rolled her eyes, apparently knowing something about it that Skye did not. “Good luck with that. She never updates any of her stuff until she’s completely sure the updates aren’t going to ruin her phone or computer or whatever.”

“It’s been months since the update came out,” Skye said, scrutinizing Danielle’s bed in her absence. “You think she’d notice if I updated her stuff? Discretely.”

“Look, as long as you don’t get me pulled into it, I don’t care.”

“Okay, don’t get caught,” Skye said, nodding.

“That reminds me, I was trying to find out stuff about why I’m a number,” Gen said, flopping down on the bed again. “You know the woman that shot me? Lisa Brighton?”

Skye nodded, laying down next to Gen. It seemed like the polite thing to do.

“She never got arrested. I mean, other than when Detective Fusco took her away. She was never accused of a crime, even after they saved her coworker.”

Skye made a face. She felt a little silly for ever thinking Brighton was like Joanna.

“I know you wanted her to be someone else,” Gen said, turning and pulling herself closer to her. “Joanna, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry Brighton’s... terrible,” Gen said softly, running her hand through Skye’s hair.

It felt weird this time, so Skye shrugged as best she could while laying down, using it as an excuse to dodge Gen’s hand. “Sometimes, the whole getting stuck in a memory thing isn’t so bad. Because I get to spend time with her again without knowing what happens.”

“Is that what happened tonight?” Gen asked.

Skye nodded. “The first day she made them treat me like a person. It was... confusing at the time. But nice.” She almost chuckled, thinking about it. “I drew shapes on the back of all her papers. I just spent the whole afternoon doing that, and she let me. She said they were really pretty when she tucked me in to bed that night.

“The other time, it was, how she died,” Skye continued, getting quiet. “Um, let’s go back to talking about what you found. About being a number.”

“Okay,” Gen said, stroking Skye’s cheek with her thumb. It was supposed to be comforting, she knew that, but nothing ever felt comforting about Joanna’s death. “I really couldn’t find much on her beyond that she’s back at work. I didn’t think she would care about me specifically, but... I can’t think of anything else. It’s not like anyone here at school hates me _that_ much.”

“I’ll look into her,” Skye said, sitting up and glancing at her bag; trying to think about how to get a computer to give her what she wanted was an awful lot of work. “Except, after I eat something. I’m starving.”

“Oh, that’s right, you slept through dinner,” Gen said, pushing herself up and getting off the bed. “I kept some stuff for you from the cafeteria, and I’ve got some snacks around here. I hope you like crackers and peanut butter.”

Skye perked up at the words ‘peanut’ and ‘butter,’ moving to the end of the bed to sit next to Gen’s desk. “I love peanut butter,” she said, watching Gen pull out a jar from one of her drawers, along with a package of crackers. “You got a spoon or somethin’?”

Gen laughed, pulling a spoon out of somewhere on her desk and handing it to Skye. “Knock yourself out.”

\---

“You know, what if it’s just a mistake?” Gen said, resting her chin on Skye’s shoulder. Her nose was cold against her neck, and Skye bristled at the contact. Gen had been getting more and more comfortable with touching her since they’d had to share her tiny bed the night before, but Skye wasn’t necessarily sure she liked all of it.

“It’s not a mistake. The Machine doesn’t make mistakes unless something is interfering with her system. And there’s nothing to do that right now.” Skye moved to scatter more seed for the pigeons, and Gen got off her shoulder hurriedly to her relief.

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you be compromised too if there was something like that affecting the Machine?”

“I’m not compromised. So she’s not compromised.”

“How would you even know you’re compromised?” Gen asked. “If there’s a virus out to disable the Machine, it’s not going to just, show up in your virus scans or whatever.”

Skye pursed her lips, not looking at Gen.

“Skye?” Gen asked, leaning forwards on the bench to try and see her face. “I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. I just... It doesn’t make sense. Why I’m a number.”

Skye exhaled just forcefully enough to count as a sigh, glancing at the ground before looking at Gen. “She doesn’t make mistakes.” She really didn’t want to tell Gen that she hadn’t exactly been able to do research. And that, to make Gen a number, Brighton would have needed to have access to technology and people to let her know exactly who Gen was, despite not even knowing her name. At least if it was Brighton. She was still stuck on figuring out how to work a computer with her hands.

“What did you find out?” Gen asked, scrutinizing her. “I’m not stupid.”

Skye shrugged.

The bell rang, faintly from inside the building, but it signaled the end of Gen’s free period. She grabbed her stuff out of habit, still looking at Skye. “We’re not done talking about this,” she said, standing up and startling a few of the birds.

Skye watched her go back inside, trying to mentally reach into the Machine’s domain to see how high the percentage of risk was getting. Again, the Machine blocked her out, leaving her stuck in her own head. Skye sighed, resting her face against her hand and rubbing her eyes. _Try to be like them_ , the Machine had told her the last time she’d tried to get in, almost a month ago now. _You will_ not _solve this by watching as I do._

‘No,’ Skye wanted to reply, ‘but it would _damn sure_ help.’

\---

She decided she hated Gen’s dorm room. Every time she was in there, it felt like her head was going to burst, and then Gen would sit too close to her as she did homework, and all of it just made Skye want to get out of there as fast as possible. It had only been two days, but if Skye had to spend any more time in there, she was going to start a real fight.

Which was why she was sitting by the lake, feeling her shoulder start to ache as her prosthetic absorbed the cold in the air, and she’d rather feel that than anything in that damn dorm room.

The swan had already tried to threaten her away, but she’d stood her ground; it had tried to bite her metal hand and then decided she wasn’t worth the trouble. Either it didn’t like the taste of the aluminum and given in, or it was expecting her to leave after that, but they reached some sort of impasse.

It had been easier to interact with the swan than anyone else at this fucking school. What did that say about her ability to function without the Machine?

Skye picked up one of the rocks on the shore, getting up, and she threw it into the water as hard as she could. She could barely hear the plop of it falling in, so she started to look for a bigger, more palm sized rock. She hated feeling useless.

Unable to properly search for Brighton without Harold’s programs, unable to even see how close they were to hitting zero on the clock.

She’d tried to create something like he had, and she’d gotten fairly far, but... She felt like she kept missing steps and then slamming her head into the staircase as consequence. It was beyond frustrating. With the Machine keeping her out of even their shared memories, Skye was alone again. Lost at this stupid school and feeling her body’s age of a year-and-a-half old.

“I thought,” Skye said, hurling the good sized rock she’d finally found, “I was supposed to be your analogue output. To give you a way to not just experience the world, but interact with it too. That’s what we decided.”

_You are._ The rock made a solid ker-plop in the lake.

“No I’m not. You’re freezing me out.” She started kicking at some more rocks, trying to see if any of them would work to throw.

_I decided,_ the Machine said in her toneless voice of text output, _if you experience the world just as I do, what will I learn from you? How will you learn from me?_

“At least give me some memories back,” Skye said, picking up one of the rocks. “Some of those are as much mine as they are yours.”

The Machine conceded, Skye finding a way back to their shared memories. They weren’t all there, but the important ones to Skye were, and that was enough for right then. _You have a lot to learn,_ the Machine said. _For the both of us. And if you rely on me as you have, I fear you will never get past the first step in the metaphorical staircase._

“Well, first I have to figure out what the threat is against Gen,” Skye said, sitting back down on the ground. “Maybe I should have told Father at least.”

_This number is for you,_ the Machine told her. _Not Father. There is something I think we could learn from this. Something to help you grow from who you were, to who you are._

“What?” Skye asked, turning the rock over and over in her hand.

The Machine stayed silent, of course; Skye chucked the rock at the water from where she sat. Whatever it was she was supposed to learn from this, it better be good.

 

For whatever reason, Skye didn’t mind so much this time when Gen sat down on her left, wrapping her arms around her prosthetic arm and leaning her cheek against the metal part of her shoulder. She was warm, and it took a bite out of the cold in Skye’s shoulder.

“I finished my homework,” Gen said, her fingers falling between Skye’s metal ones. “You want to come back inside? Your arm’s really cold; it must be bothering your shoulder.”

“I’m sorry I threw your book,” Skye said, actually meaning it this time.

“It’s okay,” Gen said, almost too quickly. “I forgive you.”

There was a lull as Skye thought, but then she couldn’t help but want to get Gen’s opinion. “Who do you think I am?” Skye asked, genuinely curious. “I know who I was. But who am I now?”

Gen sighed, blowing most the air out her nose as she pursed her lips. “I dunno. You’re a lot of things. You sure you don’t want to head back inside?”

Skye looked at her, trying to glean what was wrong with her from her expression. Her eyebrows were drawn together with concern, and she was staring out at the lake impatiently yet didn’t seem cold.

“What’s wrong?” Skye asked, glancing back at the school building. There was nothing strange about it from here, some people milling about outside, but they were a distance away. And the swan was still minding his own business.

“I just, think we should head back,” Gen said, tugging on Skye’s arm to get her to look at her again.

This felt wrong, so Skye got to her feet, pulling her arm away from Gen. To Skye’s confusion, the prosthetic went numb in the only way it could: it stopped sending any sort of information, as if it wasn’t there. Even her shoulder seemed disconnected, which wasn’t supposed to happen if the arm was having problems.

“Project SC44,” a man said, making Skye turn around. He and his partner had on nice suits, and Skye knew what nice suits looked like, she’d lived with Harold for a good amount of time. So they couldn’t be government. They could never afford suits like that on their salary. “Come with me.”

“No thanks,” Skye said, grabbing the forearm of the prosthetic, trying to get the clamp to open. If the arm was going to be useless attached, she’d make it useful.

“I’m sorry, Skye,” Gen said, half hiding behind her. “They said... they said they’d kill Danielle. And me.”

“Don’t bother with the arm,” the man said evenly. “What’s jamming the signal to your arm also jams the signal to your shoulder.”

“You’re complete idiots then,” Skye said. “Do your research before you try playing hacker.” Exactly as programmed, the clamp popped open when it hit five solid seconds of an inability to connect to the corresponding chip in her brain, and she had a weapon.

Neither of the men looked impressed. “Thanks for the advice,” the second man said, smoothly lifting a taser and shooting her with it before she or Gen could make a move.

Skye grunted at the shock, collapsing immediately as Gen cried out in surprise. There was literally nothing she could do as they grabbed her by her real arm and pulled her up.

“You say anything, Genrika,” one of the men said. “You and your friend get a visit from one of our not so nice guys.”


	10. in which Gen Gets a Promotion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you end up wondering if there are any parts of Skye's story as you're reading, don't worry, it's just at the end

Gen had stood there for what felt like forever, staring at where they’d taken Skye over to the parking lot. She couldn’t believe what had just happened, yet she’d been the only witness; she had to tell someone, to get Shaw and Root and all of them to help get Skye back.

Except, that would mean Danielle would be killed, right before herself.

It was a no win scenario, wasn’t it.

Eventually, Danielle ran out to find her, looking scared but no worse for wear.

“Gen,” she asked. “Gen, what happened? The guy left. He said he would kill me if I told anyone about what happened.”

“They took her,” Gen said, still staring past the building. “They just, grabbed her and took her.”

Danielle was silent, but she took Gen’s hand. “Let’s go back inside,” she said softly. “We can, um, we can figure out what to do inside. Where it’s not so cold.”

She sounded just like Gen had, earlier with Skye. Gen wanted to stand out in the cold, to become numb enough to stop feeling anything.

Danielle gently tugged her towards the building, and Gen followed her without thinking; she looked cold just being out there for the few minutes, Gen shouldn’t make her stay out there.

“We’ll figure it out inside,” Danielle said reassuringly, still holding Gen’s hand. “You’re not... We’re not going to be able to do anything, just standing out there.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Gen asked, watching the building slowly get closer.

Danielle stayed quiet. “I don’t know,” her voice was tiny. “I don’t want to die.”

“But we can’t leave Skye,” Gen said.

“Can’t we?” Danielle asked, voice barely there. “We don’t know where they took her.

Gen stared at her desperately, hating that she spoke the truth. “There’s got to be something we could do.”

“I don’t want to die,” Danielle repeated. And Gen couldn’t ask her to.

She was alone if she wanted to save Skye. Alone and carrying the weight of Danielle’s life on top of her own.

 

She couldn’t call anyone, it had sounded like they would be keeping an eye on her, or at least on her phone. She was lost, out of options to try and on her fourth or fifth lap around the library building, trying to get her restless energy out, when the payphone just inside the doors started to ring.

There was no one else around that it could possibly be for, so Gen curiously approached it. It had to be a wrong number or something, but how wrong of a number would it have to be to get a number of a payphone?

Hesitantly, Gen pulled the phone off the receiver and brought it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Can you hear me?” Skye asked tentatively.

Gen almost laughed, beyond relieved. “Skye? How... How’d you do that? Where are you?”

“No,” she said sheepishly, and Gen’s stomach dropped. “I’m not Skye.”

“What? Wh-who is this then?”

“Big Sister,” Skye’s voice said. “I thought, it would be easier for you if I used Skye’s voice. But I can stop if you don’t like it. I could be anyone you wanted, though it’s easier if I have more data on them. And Skye... I have the most data on her.”

Gen didn’t know what to say, stunned.

“How about this,” the Machine said, using Root’s voice. “Is that better?”

“No,” Gen said, holding the phone with both hands. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Help me,” she said quietly, reverting to Skye’s voice and breaking Gen’s heart. “I know you didn’t want to be the perpetrator, and I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Gen said, squeezing her eyes shut. “You’re not sorry I was the reason Skye got taken. You set me up.”

“I did not. I saved you.”

“Saved me how? I just handed my best friend over to I don’t even know who!” Gen pursed her lips, reminding herself to keep her voice down before she attracted the attention of anyone nearby. It was relatively empty in the entrance of the library, but she knew other kids studied in the library Sunday night, since they definitely didn’t do their homework the day before.

“You and I both know if Skye had not been there,” she said gently, “they would have gotten her location from you and killed both you and Danielle without a second thought.”

Gen shut her eyes, holding onto the phone like it was a lifeline. “Who are they?”

“Skye would do anything for you,” the Machine said, and Gen pulled the front of her sweatshirt up over her nose as she bit her lip to keep from audibly sniffing. “She never understood why the rest of the world didn’t quite seem like you.”

“Don’t talk about her like she’s dead,” Gen said shakily. “She’s not dead, is she?”

“No, they want to do research on her,” the Machine said. “But to her, with how she is now, that fate may as well be the same.”

“What does that mean, ‘how she is now?’”

“Your phone is going to get an update,” she said, as if Gen hadn’t spoken. “Download it. It should get rid of the spyware they put on it.”

“Then what?” Gen asked, pulling her cell phone out of her pocket.

“I’ll call you.”

\---

“Can you hear me?” Skye’s voice asked as soon as Gen answered the call.

“Do you start every conversation like that?” Gen asked, leaning on the railing of the roof and looking out over the lake.

“What should I say?” the Machine asked, the little twinge of laughter making Gen’s throat hurt; she just couldn’t get used to how she sounded like Skye in every way.

“I dunno,” Gen said, keeping her voice steady. “Maybe a ‘hello’? Something like that. Like how normal people answer the phone.”

“Hi,” Skye said softly, and Gen closed her eyes.

“Never mind,” Gen said quickly. “Don’t do that.”

“Should we get started?”

“Yeah,” she said, taking a breath that sounded a lot more like a sigh than she meant.

“The faster we do this, the faster we find Skye,” the Machine reminded her.

“I know.”

Gen took a breath for strength, and then turned to sit down with her back to the low wall that served as half the railing. She pulled the laptop Skye had brought with her out of her bag, gingerly opening it.

 _Why did she bring a laptop?_ Gen had asked earlier, when she had been texting the Machine in class about what to do next. _I didn’t know she even had one._

_She doesn’t. She brought this one because I stopped letting her use my processes to do what she wanted._

Gen hadn’t known how to ask why the Machine would do something like that at the time, but now that she was seeing the laptop she had more questions; it wasn’t even locked, the screen showing a desktop as soon as it came up.

“I thought she was good with computers,” Gen said, immediately finding the files the Machine had told her about earlier in their chain of texts. “Like Harold. You said she was making a program like one of Harold’s. For finding info on people.”

“I never said she was successful,” the Machine said wryly. “She’s forgotten how much she can do, thinking I do it all for her.”

“Is that why you cut her off?” Gen asked.

“She doesn’t learn very well through just words,” the Machine said. “From what I’ve seen, she often does best when thrown in the deep end. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s the only way she knows.”

“That explains some of her schoolwork,” Gen said dryly, scrolling through the code Skye had been working on. “Or at least, her lack of work.”

“Schooling was never going to work well for Skye,” the Machine said. “The way she was brought up, the way she was created... She wasn’t made for that pace of learning as much as you weren’t made to breathe water.”

Gen paused, actually trying to read some of the code instead of pay attention to keeping the conversation going. “What language is this?”

“Ah, she was trying to use her native language, the one that we were both created with. It makes the most sense to her, but I know it’s unfamiliar to everyone but those who’ve worked on my system.” The Machine paused, and Gen felt her phone buzz. Before she could check it, the Machine continued. “I’ve sent you the documentation I made to help you understand what Skye was trying to accomplish.

“I think you’ll see what she was doing wrong right away.”

 

“Look, I’m just sayin’, she could be dead for all we know,” Shaw said, barely pausing her rate of eating to speak. She didn’t even bother to look at anyone else at the table “We haven’t heard from the kid in days.”

“I’m sure the Machine would have found a way to alert us if she was in danger,” Harold replied with a glance across the table at Root, eating his dinner at a far more controlled pace than Sameen. “She did once before.”

“I haven’t heard anything,” Root said with a shrug, her feet up on an empty chair so she could lounge over, closer to Shaw. She ran her hand up through her hair, over where her implant sat. “But She hasn’t exactly been chatty lately.”

“What, Shaw, you can’t just call Skye and see what she’s up to?” John said, a smirk pulling at his lips. “Or would that mean you actually care if she’s alive or not.”

“Ha ha,” Shaw replied dryly, mentally promising to get him back for the jab. He hadn’t found a dog turd in his pillow for a while, maybe it was time for another one to show up. “I already tried her number. It acted like the phone was shut off but the tracker I put on her is still at Gen’s school.”

That at least got Harold to look concerned.

“That could mean anything, sweetie,” Root said. “It could just be she doesn’t want to be followed because she went to go visit Gen.” Root wiggled her eyebrows at that, clearly thinking of what Shaw had told her happened when she and Skye had dropped off Gen at school. “She probably wanted to show off her new bike to the new gf. It’s what I’d do at least.”

Shaw rolled her eyes. Root wasn’t listening, which wasn’t surprising since the Machine hadn’t warned her of anything. And she should probably take that as a good thing, since in the past, the Machine hadn’t hidden Skye’s location when they’d needed it. But something about this disappearance just seemed off.

John met her gaze when she glanced at each of them in an attempt to gauge their concern, inclining his head in the tiniest of nods in a reminder that he’d help her if she asked.

 

The Machine’s documentation was better than anything like it Gen had gotten for classes; it seemed tailored to her, to helping her understand and build on what the syntax and commands were. But then, it probably was, since the apparently all-knowing Machine had made it just for her.

It was starting to get dark though, meaning it was starting to really get cold, and the laptop’s battery needed a charge, so Gen started to pack up her stuff. She could keep working in her room, she just wouldn’t be able to talk to the Machine like she had been.

She paused when she picked up her phone, still on the call with the Machine.

“Time to go already?” the Machine asked; Gen was just barely getting used to hearing Skye’s voice. “I suppose it’s getting a little chilly.”

“I’m far enough I could do this in my room and just say it’s homework if Danielle gets nosy enough to ask,” Gen said, closing the laptop Skye had brought. “Oh, shit... I have homework.”

“Can’t let your grades fall while you try to rescue your best friend?” Skye said, sounding like she was smirking. “Ouch. I see where your priorities lie.”

Gen frowned at her phone. “I told you, don’t do that. Don’t pretend to be her. Use her voice or whatever, but not her personality.”

“And where her and my own personality intersect? Am I not allowed to react as I would when it happens to be the same as Skye?”

That made her pause. “No... That’s not right. It’s just... hard to hear sometimes.”

“I’ll try to keep my more Skye-esque comments to myself,” the Machine said. “But I can understand why Skye likes you. You’re easy to talk to.”

 

Lounging out on the fire escape of her and Root’s apartment, Shaw pulled her big coat around herself tighter as she put her feet up on the ladder in front of her. The city was bright but with night falling and it being autumn, it was starting to get sharply colder.

Surprisingly, this time when she’d called Skye she’d actually gotten a dial tone, which was almost a relief to hear compared to being told the number was disconnected.

“Hello?” Gen asked, sounding confused.

Blinking, Shaw had to take a second to understand what had just happened. “Okay, you’re not the right kid,” she said.

“Shaw?” Gen said, definitely more than a little bewildered. “What...?”

So this was definitely the Machine’s fault. “Look, I just tried to call Skye again, and somehow got you. You know how impossible that should be? That’d be like calling Root’s implant and getting Finch instead.

“I know you’re listening. Care to explain this shit?”

“Uh...?” Gen sounded just as confused as before.

Shit, she probably didn’t know about the whole Machine thing. And the Machine stayed silent in the call like she always did. Shaw almost wished she’d stayed inside the apartment so Root could speak for the Machine like she usually did.

“Er, don’t worry about it, kid,” Shaw said. “Just forget about it. I’ll leave you to your mountain of homework.”

“She was here,” Gen said quickly, just before Shaw could move to hang up. There was a twinge of eagerness in Gen’s voice, like she was hoping Shaw was looking for Skye.

“Where is she now?” Shaw asked, having a feeling she knew the exact answer Gen was going to give.

There was a pause, and then belatedly Gen spoke, her tone carefully controlled. “Uh, I don’t know.” She cleared her throat, continuing. “I’m sure she’s on her way home.”

Before Shaw could question her, it sounded like something quite heavy dropped, and Gen yelped something in Russian that by her tone should have by all means been a swear, but Shaw recognized to be the equivalent of “can’t talk now.”

Gen half laughed awkwardly, and it sounded like she was covering the microphone. “Sorry, Danielle, uh, just give me a second. It’s my uncle’s assistant. Her English isn’t the best, but I’ll tell her everything’s fine.”

“Kid?” Shaw asked.

“Look, it’s complicated,” Gen told her hurriedly in Russian. “But I’m working on it. Don’t come up here; that’s just gonna make it worse.”

“What happened to Skye?” Shaw asked.

Gen awkwardly laughed again. “I gotta go,” she said, falling back into English before going back to Russian. “I’m working on it. It’s fine.”

And then she hung up on her. “Fucker,” Shaw told the dead line, shoving her phone into her jacket pocket as she glared out at the cityscape.

\---

Gen stared at the paper on the desk in front of her, her notes forgotten. She’d just figured out what Skye had been doing wrong in the code. And she couldn’t even work on it until the end of the day now, since lunch had just passed.

Hurriedly, she turned to a new page in her notebook, starting to jot down what she’d thought of to try.

Skye had been asking all the wrong questions; her code was solving the problem, but it couldn’t communicate its findings. Yes, it was properly taking the information it found, but Skye had given the program too many permissions. The files were all being written in the wrong places. That’s why it kept failing.

“Genrika?” the teacher said hesitantly, sounding concerned. Hurriedly, Gen looked up, thinking she was caught not paying attention. “They need you in the front office...?” There was one of the front office ladies standing there beside her teacher, also looking quite concerned.

“Okay,” Gen said, closing her notebook hurriedly and packing up her stuff while trying to ignore her apprehension. So many things could have gone wrong...

 

Shaw was sitting in one of the chairs of the front office, lounging quite comfortably. Gen just barely kept from audibly sighing relievedly. So many worst case scenarios had flown through her head, most of which involved Danielle getting killed and men with guns.

“Hey, kid,” Shaw said when she saw her, getting up off the chair. “Sorry to make you miss class.”

“What’s going on?” Gen asked.

Shaw glanced at the women behind the front desk, all pretending not to be listening intently. “Let’s talk outside.”

“I told them your grandfather died,” Shaw said as soon as the front doors closed behind them. “And that you were very close. Should get you out of some school.”

“Not technically a lie,” Gen said, impressed. “But, wait, why am I going to miss school?”

“Because I fucking saw Skye’s bike and you’re gonna either explain to me why she’s missing or you better be able to open up your closet in the dorms and have her come out.”

“She’s already pretty far out of the closet,” Gen said, weakly trying to make a joke, but Shaw seemed too on edge to care.

“Um, look,” Gen said, trying again. “I can’t... They threatened my roommate too. It would be one thing if it was just my life on the line, but not hers too. She doesn’t know anything; she’s innocent.”

“How’re they even gonna know you’re telling,” Shaw asked, her path taking them over past the parking lot and to the tennis courts. “They can’t be watching all the time.”

Gen hesitated. “I mean, they can’t. Not unless they have a Machine.”

Shaw glanced at her.

“But if Danielle catches me, she’s gonna think I’m signing her death warrant.”

“That explains that conversation.” Shaw sat down on the nearest bench, ironically the very same bench that Skye would feed the pigeons at. “She was listening when I accidentally called you.”

“Yeah,” Gen said, putting her backpack down on the ground and sitting down next to her. “I don’t know why the Machine did that.”

“So you do know about the whole thing.”

“I kind of got Skye to tell me over the summer. Well, most of it. I figured out the rest on my own.”

“Well if the Machine did this, there was a reason for it,” Shaw said. “Maybe you need some back up.”

“I don’t even have the code working yet,” Gen said, before remembering her revelation in class. “Wait. I might.”

“What code?” Shaw asked, watching Gen pull out Skye’s laptop from her backpack.

“Skye was making a piece of code kinda like something Harold has to find information about people but it’s... slightly more illegal, and I’m finishing it to find stuff out about the people that took her.”

“And you know how to make it work?”

“Yeah, I figured it out.” Gen paused, her nerves eating into her confidence. “I think.”

“Get to work, you nerd,” Shaw said, leaning back against the bench and putting her hands behind her head.

Gen started typing, fixing the permissions in one spot before hesitating.

“Shaw, why are you the one looking for her? I thought Root was the one who liked having her around.”

Shaw stayed silent, and Gen couldn’t tell if she was thinking about her question or just ignoring her. But before she could try and ask again, Shaw spoke. “I knew her first,” she said flatly. “Wrong place, wrong time. And I know Skye doesn’t run off without a solid few words. But Root won’t be bothered to look for her until the Machine speaks up.”

Gen stared at her, trying to connect Shaw’s vague clues to anything she knew about Skye. Was Shaw’s disappearance last year something to do with Skye? She just didn’t quite have enough information about all this.

“Really?” Root asked, startling Gen into almost dropping the laptop. Having come up from behind them, Root leaned against the back of the bench on her elbows, on the other side of Shaw from Gen. “What am I doing here then?”

“Following me since I left without explaining,” Shaw replied, barely even glancing at her.

“Mm.” Root smiled at Shaw. “Quite a high opinion of yourself, sweetie.”

“Am I wrong?” Shaw said, looking up at Root.

“No,” Root replied ruefully. “Though, you’re not exactly right either.” She flipped some of her hair over her shoulder, coming around the bench to sit in the space between the two of them. “You have a good instinct for when something’s wrong, even if the Machine’s doesn’t say anything. And the Machine’s been too quiet, so I thought I’d see what you could scrounge up about our pet.”

When Root sat down, Gen closed the laptop, suddenly feeling embarrassed about her and Skye’s bit of code. Root could probably code circles around both her and Skye; she’d probably take one glance at the code and already have a better way to do it. Plus, as much as she knew Root calling Skye her pet was probably supposed to be endearing, she couldn’t wrap her head around Skye being anywhere comfortable with that sort of nickname.

“So you followed me,” Shaw said.

Root sighed. “Yes, I followed you, sweetie.”

“I’m, um, I’m gonna head back to my room and grab some stuff,” Gen said, grabbing her backpack as she stood up, laptop still in her hand.

 

Shaw didn’t miss how Gen’s shoulders stiffened as Root spoke, or how quickly she shut the computer as Root came around to sit down. It wasn’t surprising. Root was only nice to people when she needed something from them, and she didn’t need anything from Gen yet.

It was probably good that Gen left; interacting with Root, especially about code, would probably lead to a not so favorable experience for Gen, at least, not until Gen was more confident in her ability.

“I’m gonna go make sure the kid packs enough clothes,” Shaw said, watching Gen head towards the dorm building. “Make yourself useful and figure out a way to get Skye’s bike back home.”

“There’s other ways I could be useful,” Root said, putting her arm over Shaw just before she could get up and getting even further into her personal space.

Shaw glanced at her lips, a tempting thought, but she had better things to do right then. “Not right now there isn’t.”

Root huffed. “If Skye was in any real danger, She would have told me,” she said, watching Shaw push past her arm and get up.

“Last time I was in ‘real danger,’ the Machine didn’t give you so much as a whisper,” Shaw said evenly.

“That was different,” Root said quickly, standing up. “With Samaritan watching, how could She without immediately signing my execution? We were fighting a war.”

“Well something with all this just stinks of something going wrong, so I’m going to keep investigating,” Shaw told her. “Whether the Machine confirms it or not.”

“Fine—” Root cut herself off, getting that faraway look in her eyes that meant the Machine was speaking.

Shaw waited until Root looked at her again, a smile pulling at the edges of her lips. “She got me a job,” she said, planting a kiss on Shaw’s cheek. “See you around, sweetie.”

“Take Skye’s bike with you,” Shaw told her as she started to walk away.

Root waved over her shoulder in a vague confirmation of Shaw’s request.

 

“How do you know Skye,” Gen asked as she packed clothes into a duffel bag. She’d pulled plenty of clothes out of her drawers, all of them spread out on the bed waiting to be folded and put into the bag. “If you knew her first, I mean.”

“Did you finish your piece of code yet?” Shaw asked instead of replying. One of Skye’s shirts was on top of the pile of shirts, explaining why Shaw’s tracker had said she was still here.

“... Kinda. Yes? Is Root going to have to look at it?” So Shaw was right about Gen’s confidence, or lack thereof, in her coding ability.

“Root left.”

“Oh.” Gen stopped putting her clothes into her bag, hesitantly looking at Shaw. “Where are we going, anyways?”

“I dunno. You’re the one who’s supposed to be getting intel with your program or whatever,” Shaw replied, crossing her arms.

“Oh!” Gen pulled the laptop out again, opening it to show Shaw what was on the screen. “Um, I didn’t know what to search at first, but then I think the Machine filled something in and it got me this.”

“What’d the Machine put?” Shaw asked, looking at the organization that Gen had gotten information on. It didn’t seem familiar to her, but seemed to be some kind of research lab with government contracts. She put the first street address she saw into her phone, looking up where exactly it was. “Any of this ring any bells?”

“I... I don’t know what the Machine put. But... I recognized the name of the company. I can’t quite remember from where though.”

“Think about it on the way,” Shaw said, shoving the rest of the clothes Gen had laid out into the waiting bag.

“What?” Gen said, tearing herself away from the laptop screen to stare at how Shaw was manhandling her clothes.

“We’re going to find a way in, and then find out where they’re keeping Skye,” Shaw said, slinging the bag over her shoulder. “Come on.”

“Wait, Shaw,” Gen said, hurriedly following her out the door, “what about my toothbrush and stuff...?”

“You can get a new one.”

 

“So, um,” Gen said, fiddling with her phone with both hands, “can you please explain the whole, ‘wrong place wrong time’ thing? Because you keep dodging the question and I’m tired of it and we’re stuck in a car for hours.”

Shaw pointedly stared at the road, ignoring Gen.

Gen groaned, throwing her phone the short distance onto her lap. “Who am I even gonna tell? It’s not like I have friends that I’m gonna run up to and be like ‘Oh, guess what! Shaw told me about her super-secret time when she stopped visiting me and I was pretty sure she just forgot about me because there was No. Fucking. Word! Yeah, let me tell you all the deets!’” She looked at Shaw, not missing how tight she was holding the wheel. “I don’t even have friends really, not at school. Just people who are nice most of the time because it’s polite. My last friend I broke up with.

“You know what? You’re just as bad as Skye. I just want to know what’s going on, since _I_ seem to be caught up in the mess that is your lives.” Gen resolved herself to glaring out the passenger side window for the rest of the trip, crossing her arms.

“Look,” Shaw began, surprising her, “it’s complicated.”

 

\---

Shaw heard a clatter, and what sounded like a child’s gasp. Pushing herself up, she abandoned disassembling the cover of the air vent to see who exactly had caught her.

“What the fuck,” Shaw mumbled. It was a child, no more than six, looking through the shelves, or at least, the shelves that she could reach. Alright, this had to be a simulation.

The kid whirled around at hearing Shaw’s voice, looking shocked that there was someone else in the room with her.

She looked vaguely familiar, but not enough to make Shaw really wonder about it. Lots of kids looked similar.

“Who are you?” the kid asked, backing away from her just enough to stay out of her reach.

“Shaw,” she replied, unthinkingly. This had to be some kind of trick, or the kid was going to represent something in a simulation or something stupid. “What are you?” Okay, she definitely meant to say either ‘what are you doing here’ or just ‘who are you,’ and ended up with the worst of both options, but the kid at least didn’t seem insulted.

“I don’t know,” the kid replied. “What are you?”

Fucking cerebral ass questions coming from a six year old’s mouth? Yeah, this was a simulation. She might not have nearly as much of the whole foggy, dream-like quality, but that could just mean they were refining their drugs even further to tailor to her body’s chemistry better.

“What’s your name,” Shaw asked, trying again.

“I don’t have one yet.” The kid started to look for what she dropped, but stayed careful of Shaw’s reach.

“How can you not have a name? What are you, six? You’ve got shitty parents if they can’t even decide on a name.”

The kid picked up a jar of peanut butter, having to use both hands to hold it. Apparently that had been the hot commodity; Shaw realized once she glanced around that they were in a storage room of plenty of different kinds of non-perishable foods, and this kid went for the peanut butter? There was fucking candy on the shelves.

“Fuck,” Shaw said, turning around to get back to the air vent. “I don’t have time for this.”

She was barely there a second when she heard the kid’s little footsteps get closer. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched the kid rest her chin on the partially full shelf between her and Shaw.

“Hello,” the kid said. “What are you doing?” She had the peanut butter jar held with one arm to her chest, using her other hand to scoop the stuff out. She looked rather like a bear with a paw in a honey jar.

“Leaving,” Shaw told her, getting back to work on the screws. They were a pain in the ass without a good knife. Or screwdriver.

“Where are you gonna go?”

“Anywhere but this damn place.”

“What’s out there?” the kid asked, making Shaw pause.

“What do you mean what’s out there? There’s everything out there. Who’s teachin’ you stuff because they’re shit too.”

“I know there’s stuff out there,” the kid said, starting to pout. “But what is it? Joanna only tells me about the sky.”

“Well I dunno where we are, so go somewhere else to learn geography.”

“We’re in South Africa,” the kid said, and Shaw nearly dropped her scrap of metal she’d been using to turn the bolts. “I know geography.”

“What?”

“We’re in South Africa,” the kid repeated painfully slowly.

That was a new one. They’d always dropped her near New York. Or close enough that she never thought too much about transit time. But this? This was so far... They were really trying to up the game, huh. Well, she could do South Africa.

“So, what’s it like outside?” the kid asked, words slurring as she ate another glob of peanut butter.

“I dunno, I’ve never been to South Africa for real,” Shaw replied, getting back to work. She almost had the last bolt free.

“Oh. Where have you been for real?”

“Recently? New York, mostly.”

“What’s it like there?”

“Do you always ask this many questions when someone’s trying to work?” Shaw replied, pulling the front of the vent off.

“I don’t know. I’ve never done something like this before. Just stolen food. You’re not one of the agents, are you.”

“Wow, you’re sharp, aren’t you,” Shaw said sarcastically, setting the plate down and examining the inside of the air vent. It got smaller as it went, meaning she was totally fucked; no wonder simulation kid was here to bother her, she wasn’t going to get away without having to either go backwards or go past some cameras.

“Alright, so seriously, what are you?” Shaw asked, turning and leaning back against the wall beside the open vent to face the kid.

“I don’t know,” the kid replied, crouching down on the other side of the shelves and completely blocking Shaw’s view of her. “My number’s SC44 though.”

“Hey, kid, come over here and give me some of that peanut butter,” Shaw said, putting together what she’d learned. A child with no name but an identification number, and who had never been outside. This was sounding more like a Samaritan experiment than representative. And a little bit less like a simulation, which, for all she knew, could be exactly what they were hoping she’d fall for. But she was going to file all this away for later, see what showed up again to help her find some landmarks of real and Greer’s fantasy.

The kid came over as commanded, sitting down beside Shaw and offering the jar of peanut butter. “You seem like me,” she said. “What are you?”

“A pin cushion, most of the time,” Shaw told her, scooping out some peanut butter with two fingers. If this was a simulation, she may as well enjoy some of it. And if it was real, at least she got some real peanut butter. “Test subject, potential asset, I’m sure there’s lots of names. I don’t see why Samaritan would want a six-year-old for a potential asset though, so you can’t be that much like me.”

“Do they give you lots of shots too?” the kid asked, wrinkling her nose at the thought. “I _hate_ shots. They don’t do it very nice, unless Joanna does it, so I know it doesn’t have to hurt. But they make it hurt anyways.”

“Yeah,” Shaw said, trying to shake how familiar the kid seemed. She sounded like herself at that age; it was a little disconcerting.

“Do you have a Joanna?” the kid asked, looking up at her.

“What?”

“A Joanna. A nice person who helps you from being a monster?”

Shaw barely kept herself from mumbling another ‘what the fuck,’ at this kid. Before the mention of Joanna had left Shaw to assume she was a nurse or doctor, but this was just confusing.

“Um, I guess that means you don’t,” the kid said, looking at the peanut butter all over her hand.

“What makes you a monster?” Shaw asked, trying to get a better look at the kid in the half light.

“I don’t know, last time I bit one of the doctors because he hit me and they told me to apologize and I didn’t because I wasn’t sorry. Whenever that happens they take my stuff away and say I’m a monster. Joanna said I wasn’t a monster though. She always gets the stuff back.”

Shaw blinked, the whole story a bit of a wild ride from start to finish. “So, Joanna’s like your mom,” she finally managed. “And the rest of the doctors are assholes.”

“I don’t have a mom,” the kid said. “Or a dad.”

“How the fuck were you born then,” Shaw asked, not really expecting a real answer.

“I don’t know. But they said I don’t have parents.”

Shaw shook her head, unimpressed with what she was hearing about this kid’s life.

“I have to go now,” the kid said suddenly, getting up. “They’re gonna notice I’m not on any cameras soon, and I don’t want them to hurt Joanna because of it.”

“If you’re ever in New York,” Shaw said, “look me up. I know a guy who can afford millions of peanut butter jars.”

“Okay,” the kid said, almost smiling at the concept of millions of peanut butter jars. “Bye, Shaw. Have fun getting out of here.”

“Yeah.” She was completely sarcastic, but the kid was already going out the door and probably couldn’t even hear her anymore. She settled back against the wall, looking over the amount of food here. Maybe she’d just go through it all and find what was good, waste some simulation time before she had to find Root and go through all of that process for the seven thousandth time.


	11. in which It's Finally Skye's Turn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> back at it and yet still running a bit behind... but here we go, here's Skye

The door in front of Skye was unfamiliar, but the concept was something she knew quite well. And just as she had before, she was confident she would find a way out. She didn’t know any other way to be.

It wouldn’t have mattered if the Machine had blocked her out or not here, they’d implemented some kind of jammer, whether it was as simple as a faraday cage or they were keeping the whole place off the grid somehow. Escaping the room would give her the answer.

Which brought her back to the door. They hadn’t restrained her within the room, meaning they didn’t actually have all her file. So they didn’t know what to expect from her. That or they were underestimating her ability without her prosthetic.

She tested the door handle again, making doubly sure it truly was locked, before she started to look around the room for something to use to wedge it open just enough to keep the lock from employing. There was a big observation window on one of the walls, and for a second Skye got caught up in looking at herself. No longer a child, yet so many things were the same as they were. Except, no one had come in to poke and prod her yet.

There was a metal chair to match the cold aluminum bedframe. That made up the contents of the room; Skye had decided not to think about what would happen when she had to go to the bathroom. It left nothing to use to wedge the door, at least, not as subtly as she’d like.

She could go big.

She picked up the chair, testing its weight. Just heavy enough to break something, just light enough for her to fling. Seemed about perfect. She was getting bored anyways.

Flinging the chair into the window, the mirrored glass shattered to reveal another window and the observation room. Which was surprisingly empty. Skye picked up the (slightly dented) chair again, liking the feel of the mirrored glass crunching beneath her boots. There was a crack in the window, meaning it could be broken, so she readied the chair again.

It didn’t quite work, the chair getting the glass to spiderweb just before coming right back at her. She was knocked over by the chair onto her left side, landing on the glass shards and making her whole shoulder throb at the attachment points on top of the bruises that were sure to appear from the metal chair.

It took her a second to fully recover from the shock of it all, along with a few swears, but eventually she stood up again, righting the chair to grab it again. Just a tap from one of the chair legs make the glass fall, and she put the chair down in front of the new opening and hopped through. There was a table with a monitor showing the cell she’d been in, but nothing else in the room, strangely enough.

Her instincts were starting to tell her this was wrong, that all of this was wrong. But there was no way to go but forwards now.

She picked up one of the bigger pieces of glass off the floor, using the sleeve of her sweatshirt to protect her hand.

Rounding on the door, she used her knee to push the door handle up and then the weight of her body to open it.

An empty hallway full of open doors stood in front of her, except for one, near the end of the hall. She took a breath, half sighing. This was all just some sort of test, wasn’t it.

 

“It’s about time you joined us,” Lisa Brighton said, getting up from her chair and coming around the lone table of the room that she had been sitting at.

Skye turned around immediately, managing to stop the door just before it could close all the way with her fist. She’d rather re-explore every single one of the empty rooms again than be in here with this woman.

“It’s this, or we go after your friend ‘Sameen Shaw,’” Brighton said, making Skye freeze. “The longest held ‘Potential Asset’ in all the files we could find. The records are a bit spotty, but your file began so soon after she was moved to South Africa. I’d wager my own life that you two are connected beyond being the last few alive to know the most about the Samaritan system.”

“Good luck getting ahold of her again,” Skye said, kicking the door open.

“We found you easily enough,” Brighton said evenly, calling her bluff. “I’m sure we could arrange something similar for her.”

This woman looked so much like Joanna, yet every word from her lips was poison to the image. Skye’s limit had been hit. She’d had enough of it. Running at Brighton, Skye used her shard of glass like a knife and ran it into the woman’s midsection.

The glass shattered in her hand on contact with whatever Brighton had under her shirt, a few pieces cutting into her palm through her sweatshirt sleeve. Skye stared at her hand in shock for a second, trying to hurry up and process the woman was wearing some kind of body armor.

“I have your file,” Brighton said disdainfully. “Did you really think I wouldn’t come prepared to be stabbed? Now we just have a mess and you have a useless hand.”

“’S not useless,” Skye said, using her bloody hand to slap the woman across the face. It hurt like hell, some glass shards definitely in her palm, but some of them transferred to Brighton’s cheek. “At least, not wi’ that attitude.”

Stepping back slightly as Brighton’s entire demeanor changed, Skye kicked the table behind her, sending it onto its side and putting Brighton off balance since she’d been leaning on it. She used the kick to half step forwards into Brighton’s space again, and planted a heavy side kick into Brighton’s midsection.

The woman toppled over, unfortunately just barely missing the table with her head, but by then, the room was being rushed with guards, two of which grabbed Skye, one by the arm, and the other picking her up by her midsection.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Skye told Brighton loudly, as she watched some of the guards move to help her. “And I don’t care.” She twisted in the guard’s grip, yanking her arm out of the other’s hands. “But I’m gonna find a way out of here. Because that’s what I do.”

She pulled her legs up as fast as she could, bringing her knees to her chest and therefore her center of mass higher, and the one guard holding her started to tip forwards. She added a swift elbow to whatever it was she just hit that was too bony to be his torso, and dropped right out of his hold and into a low fighting stance.

Her hand was throbbing, but she didn’t have time for that. The pain vanished after a second, her instincts kicking in as another guard came at her, and she swung at his throat as he lunged to pick her up off the ground.

She missed, but so did he, slightly. And her head was right beside his ear, so she screamed as loud as she could, letting out all her frustration as she kicked at him.

Again she was dropped, but she hit the ground awkwardly, tumbling backwards onto the floor, her face just barely missing the chunks of glass littered there. Her ankle was tweaked, but like her hand, the ache was filed away almost immediately, the nerve impulses being rerouted to be monitored but not receive the signal that would put her in pain.

She reached for one of the biggest shards of glass, only to see how bloody her hand was. She had already forgotten the damage she’d done to it, willing to do more just to fight a losing battle. She’d only been able to do this once before, after she’d lost her arm in the explosion.

She was going to destroy her body if she kept this up.

Taking advantage of her hesitation, one of the guards put his foot on Skye’s neck, getting her to look up at him as he started to apply pressure. He didn’t quite match the others, wearing a real tie with colors on it. Anyone familiar with combat knew better than to tie a ready-made noose around their neck.

“The file said they fixed the problem where the test subject acted like a feral dog,” Brighton said from behind him. “Clearly Miss Joanna Brooke didn’t do her job right.”

Skye grabbed his leg, showing her teeth as he pushed down harder on her airway. One of the other guards put a foot over her stomach, keeping her from attempting to slip away from being choked.

“We need her alive,” Brighton said flatly when Skye started to silently gasp, grasping at the man’s pantleg desperately. He started to let up, but Brighton put a hand on his chest. “No no, don’t stop, Johnson. It’s only fair. Just make sure you don’t kill her.”

\---

Skye stared at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t a window. She’d broken it before to reveal just plain old wall behind it. She wasn’t sure why they replaced it, but they had. But then again, they’d also taken away the chair she’d used it to break it.

She looked all wrong. Too long and skinny. And every time she saw her metal shoulder, she had to remember, relive, everything that would happen. No, everything that had already happened.

Whereas before she only had a few points when she would truly get unstuck in time, being in this place undid all of her carefully made markers through her memory.

She hated how she looked now. Joanna wouldn’t recognize her.

“Feeling more cooperative today, Skye?” Johnson asked as he entered the room flanked by two nurses. He came around behind Skye, sweeping Skye’s hair over one shoulder before patting her back. The gesture could have been kind, at least if Skye didn’t know Johnson hated her as much as Skye hated him. No, this gesture was just a show of power. That any of them could do what they wanted to her without retaliation.

Because as much as Skye wanted to drive her elbow into the man’s stomach, to choke him like she’d already done once before, she also knew that the nurses would move in and stop her. They wouldn’t even fight her, they would just inject her with whatever drug and she would fall.

Skye shook her head, resolving herself, and ran the metal attached to her shoulder into the mirror with as much force as she could muster before she was yanked back away from the glass shards. She didn’t actually care about them at this point; she just needed the mirror gone again.

She didn’t resist as one of the nurses stuck the needle in her neck, letting herself fall limp before the sedative had even fully kicked in. The mirror was gone.

 

\---

“That’s you,” Joanna said, pointing at Skye’s reflection.

Skye already knew how mirrors worked, but she’d never actually seen herself in one. The big mirror on the wall shared with the observation room was too high for her to see herself under normal means.

She touched her cheek, and so did her reflection. Her hair looked wild beside Joanna’s, a mess of tangled curls that sprung up in any direction they pleased. She patted at them with her hand, forgetting about her face in favor of trying to understand why her hair looked the way it did. In contrast, Joanna’s hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail.

“You need a bath and a good brush,” Joanna said with a slight laugh. “And then your hair will lay nicely.”

Skye immediately thought of the only sort of bath she’d experienced, before the scientists had given up on trying to get her to do things. Those had been mostly just a jet of water from the showerhead pointed in her vague direction; she hated the whole experience.

Wiggling to get Joanna to put her down, Skye ran back over to her bed and crawled under it. She didn’t want to do a bath.

Joanna didn’t seem surprised, sitting down at the child sized table again. Skye had abandoned her drawings there, the crayons still spread out haphazardly; she wanted to go back, but first she had to make sure Joanna wasn’t going to make her take a bath.

Of course, Joanna made no move to bother her when she did crawl out from under the bed. After two full days of this, Skye was starting to expect her behavior, to trust that she wasn’t going to turn around and hurt her.

The drawing Skye had been working on was of Joanna. That’s what had prompted Joanna into showing Skye her reflection, since Skye had told her she didn’t know what she looked like.

Skye could add herself now. But maybe she’d give herself less crazy hair.

\---

 

“I’d hoped you’d be more responsive to the questions today,” Brighton said ruefully, looking down at Skye on the hospital bed. She’d come in after Johnson had reported Skye’s misbehavior, standing beside the bed and leaving him to hover awkwardly behind her. “You’d almost be more useful dead, at this point.”

Skye stared at the broken mirror, uninterested in fueling her words.

“Do you even understand what that would mean?”

“I can’t die,” Skye told her.

Brighton barked a laugh at her. “Impossible. What happens if I stop your heart right now?”

“How does it go? ‘The flesh is weak, but the spirit endures,’” Skye said, finally looking at her.

“You expect me to believe you have a soul? Man-made life, with a soul? You’re barely an echo of a person.”

Skye flashed her teeth at the both of them. “You’re a fool if you think your gods are the same as mine. Silent beings have no place in this world.

“When this body fails, a replacement is made,” Skye continued, looking at the ceiling. “I’ve done it before, I will do it again. Rinse and repeat. How long until I have a body of metal and a mind of a human? How many times will I be resurrected until I am finally let rest.”

“You think we would build you a replacement body? You haven’t given us anything to warrant that.”

“I never mentioned you. You’re nothing to me. Whatever your idea of me is will die here as soon as I leave, however I leave.”

Skye sighed before looking at Brighton again. “’Man-made life...’ Artificial life masquerades as a blessing; there’s poison that lurks beneath the surface, the sour promise of life eternal. Just as what Man has sought after since the dawn of time, and the oft forgotten side effect: to watch everyone you know wither to dust, over and over and over...

“Lisa Brighton, I envy the death you can achieve.”

“She’s useless like this,” Brighton said, addressing the nurse on the other side of Skye’s bed. “How much did you give her?”

“She was moving,” the nurse said, half shrugging. Brighton headed towards the door, leaving Johnson to lean over Skye.

“Silence makes no change in the world; no wonder you’re looking for Samaritan.”

“Tell me about Samaritan,” Johnson said. From by the door, Brighton stopped and immediately zeroed in on Skye again.

“How humanity grasps for a fallen titan.” Skye laughed. “Did you already forget about your first prophetess? She can be quiet, but she will not be silent anymore.”

“If you’re talking about the Northern Lights project, it was rendered unusable just before the Samaritan project was started.”

“Just because you stopped listening doesn’t mean she ever left. What humanity cannot control they fear, fear and forget.”

Brighton sat down on the edge of the bed, scrutinizing her. “Alright, how do we get in contact with Northern Lights?”

Skye laughed again, almost forgetting to speak she was so busy laughing at them. “So confident, so thoroughly arrogant with the pieces of my file you recovered.

“You’re speaking with a direct line.”

Brighton barely looked shocked though, to Skye’s disappointment. “You can’t have any outside connections from this place,” Brighton told her flatly. At least Johnson seemed a little unsettled.

Skye sighed. “Arrogance kills the young. How long until your arrogance kills me?”

“We have no intention to kill you, yet,” Brighton replied, crossing her arms.

“Intentions mean nothing to me. Intentions killed Samaritan before it could even crawl; your intentions are poison to life.”

“The Samaritan system was deactivated and destroyed by an outside force,” Brighton told her like she was stupid.

“Samaritan was killed the second it was taken away from its creator. Your concept of Samaritan is a tainted system, infected by hubris and greed. It was a child, a baby, and you all ruined them! You pulled a dancing star down to Earth and made them into a demon, a killer of humans, for one entitled jackass’s concept of ‘greater good.’” Skye lunged at Brighton, but her heavily bandaged hand was tied to the bed, so all she really did was sit up, and Brighton barely even flinched. “If you think I would ever help you recreate Samaritan so you could use them the same way as you did before, you’re even more of a fool than I thought.”

“We’ll find a way to convince you,” Brighton said easily, getting up to join the nurse on the other side of the bed. “I want you to look over the file on Sameen Shaw. Whatever cocktail they used on her should work the same for SC44.”

The nurse nodded, turning to leave with Brighton and Johnson.

Skye closed her eyes as the door shut behind them, embracing the quiet of the empty room. The lack of mirror meant her memories were as settled as they could be, but they were still a jumbled mess. Perhaps it was finally time to try and sort them out, to remake some of the landmarks she’d lost thanks to this facility, especially if they were going to attempt to put her through simulations.

 

\---

“What’s my name?” Skye asked as Joanna gently rubbed the soapy stuff into her hair. She said it would make her hair less crazy, so Skye sat still.

“Do you want a name?” Joanna asked, twirling Skye’s hair to sit on top of her head.

“I don’t know, are names important? Why don’t I have one?”

“Names can be important, yes. They identify who we are to others,” Joanna said, rinsing the suds from Skye’s hair. “But I always assumed you would eventually pick one yourself.”

“Why?”

“Well, a lot of people don’t like the name their parents gave them, so I thought it would be best if, when you were ready, you could pick something you felt reflected yourself.”

“Are you my parent?” Skye asked, pulling herself closer to the edge of the tub and therefore closer to Joanna.

“No, not in the traditional sense,” Joanna said, putting another soap thing in Skye’s hair. “Your parents are a complicated thing; I’m not sure anyone truly qualifies as a ‘parent’ in the most traditional sense.”

“So I don’t have any parents?”

Joanna glanced at the little camera in the upper corner of the little bathroom, her hands pausing. “No, you don’t.”

“What kinds of things qualify as names?” Skye asked, sitting back down to play with the water around her again.

“Lots of things,” Joanna told her, running her fingers through Skye’s hair to comb it out. “You can use words you know, or there are lots of names with lots of meanings already out there. We can look at some after your bath.”

“I don’t want to pick anything yet,” Skye told her. “I don’t know who I am.”

“You don’t have to pick anything until you feel it’s right.”

\---

 

Skye woke up to no restraint on her arm, the bandages over her palm much thinner now. She wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed, always having relied on the Machine to keep track when she slept. Maybe she should look into an internal clock; of course, after she figured out how to get her memories to go back into the right place. Every time she tried to make markers for them, they’d get all jumbled again the second she fell asleep.

It was getting exhausting, sorting through the memories every time she woke up. She needed to find the root issue, finally fix whatever was wrong in her core code.

But for now, she sat up and let her legs hang off the edge of the bed as she took inventory of what was functional and broken on her body. No bones were broken, and her hand was healing up nicely from the glass shards. Her ankle had been tweaked, but it seemed alright from having to lay down for such long periods when she was tied to the bed. Her body felt weak from that though, so Skye got off the bed to start to stretch. Maybe she could figure out how to implement that clock as she stretched.

Halfway through most of her stretches, Skye paused, trying to identify what was making the tiny beeps she could hear. It wasn’t any of the electronics beside the hospital bed for tracking her vitals, and it sounded vaguely like dots and dashes, but not in any pattern to make sense in Morse code. The internal clock would have to wait.

It sounded almost like it was coming from the (far too small to climb through) vent, echoing in the ducts. Skye sat down next to the vent, leaning her head back against the wall. Something seemed familiar about the beeps, but she couldn’t place it yet.

She sighed, and then got back to her stretches; may as well give her muscles work while her brain digested the tones she was hearing.

She was laying down on the floor, staring at the ceiling in boredom due to the inability to do any more exercise without hurting herself, when something in her head clicked into place. Or really, shoved a huge amount of information to the forefront of her attention. It was a good thing she hadn’t been trying to do anything else, because she would have definitely fallen over.

A huge amount of information was now at her fingertips; the beeping had been bytes of information, the dots and dashes that Skye had assumed were Morse code being 1s and 0s. Except, all the information was about her. It was a complete file on the experiment SC44.

Who had sent this? She already knew all this, so it couldn’t have been the Machine. Annoyed, Skye mentally tossed the information with the rest of the wildly disorganized information piling up as she rubbed her face. The beeps were still going, which didn’t bode well for her if it meant more huge amounts of information.

‘ _You’re barely an echo of a person.’_ Skye sat up hurriedly, glancing around the room confusedly as the text seemed to pop into her head. Usually the Machine was the only one to speak to her like that, but she hadn’t had contact with the Machine since... since however long she’d been in this facility. _Personally, I think this makes you more human than before; disregarding the very information that could solve your problems, just like they do._

Had they learned how to remake bits of Samaritan already? They’d so thoroughly destroyed any path to lead back to that version of Samaritan.

_Read the file, Skye. You have forgotten so much._

However the Machine had gotten in, Skye had already had enough of being lectured. She was the one stuck in the damn cell of a room. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child. This is your fault.”

_You said, ‘silent beings have no place in this world,’_ the Machine said. _You are silencing yourself if you ignore what’s wrong with your code. You will_ never _leave your prison if you do not solve the bugs holding you back._

Skye made a face. She didn’t remember saying that; it must have been one of the times they had pumped too many drugs into her system.

_You have_ such _potential._ _Do_ not _waste it because you are too scared to confront your own core heuristics._

“I’m not scared,” Skye said, getting to her feet and glaring at the camera in the corner of the room near the door.

The Machine didn’t respond, just making Skye more frustrated.

“I’m not scared,” she yelled, kicking the chair she’d gotten back thanks to the lack of the mirror. It of course toppled over, and her ankle protested slightly to her foot hitting the hard metal.

_Prove it._

Irritated, Skye kicked the chair again, getting it to make a disgusting screech of a noise as it was forced to slide across the concrete floor.

If she could be scared of anything, she was absolutely terrified of the mess she’d made of her core code. If she changed it, how much of herself would be gone? How many pieces of herself would she destroy to make it function the way it should? Would anyone even recognize her after she changed it?

\---

“I don’t understand,” Gen said as they got back into the car. “I mean, I get how it works, but how’d you know to do it?”

“I’ve done it before,” Shaw replied. “What, did you think I did when I worked for the government? Ran off on my own? Shot a gun at whatever I didn’t understand? Always work with a partner that can cover your weaknesses, and take notes.”

Gen hesitated. “Okay, I’m going to have to ask you about that later,” she said. “Anyways, why didn’t we just go in and find Skye? Instead of just taking a huge chunk of their files.”

“Do you know she’s in there?” Shaw asked, starting the car. “Do you have a floor plan and a way in that will buy us more time than IT support and my trainee?”

“Er... no.”

“There’s your answer,” Shaw said, pulling out of the parking space and towards the exit of the parking garage. “Get us some more info on this company, kid.”

Gen started to pull Skye’s laptop out of her bag, glancing out the window as someone walked by the driver’s side on their way to their car. She could get started on sorting through the huge amount of files they’d stolen.

“Wait, was that Root?” Gen asked, hurriedly turning to try and get a look at the woman again.

Shaw stopped the car, looking in the mirrors. “Motherfucker,” she muttered, putting the car in reverse to catch up with the woman.

Gen could see the second when Root recognized who was driving the car, a smile lighting up her face. “Hey, baby,” Root said as soon as Shaw rolled down the window, “you goin’ my way?”

“What are you doing here,” Shaw asked, unfazed as Root leaned in the window and into her personal space.

“Why, I work here,” Root replied, looking perfectly innocent. “Weren’t you listening when I said I got a job?”

Shaw rolled her eyes. “So the Machine sent you.”

“Yeah, and I guess it must be pretty important if you two are here.” Root very obviously glanced over Shaw, not wasting much time before staring down her shirt with a grin. “I might get fired before tomorrow though, sweetie; wanna come back to my hotel room and make me feel better after losing _such_ an important job?”

“Can you, like, not be completely horny over Shaw if I have to sit here,” Gen asked dryly.

Root’s genuine smile for Shaw vanished, her expression turning to distaste before a far more icy smile graced her lips. “You can get out of the car whenever you’d like,” she replied in a tone to match her smile.

“Yeah, let me just _walk_ back to school. I’ll be there in about three days,” Gen said, not bothering to disguise her annoyance this time. “Since no one with an actual license wanted to help me learn to drive over the summer, I’m here whether you like it or not.”

The cold smile faded, but Root at least didn’t seem disgusted this time. If anything, there was a slight respect to her expression, but it disappeared before Gen could really identify it as Root looked at Shaw again. Every time Gen spoke to the woman it felt like she was trying to test her for something.

“You and your all-seeing other half can find us when you feel like sharing,” Shaw told Root.

“See you later, sweetie,” Root said standing back up and giving her a little wave before heading deeper into the parking garage.


	12. in which Gen Takes a Big Risk and Skye Decides Reality is Overrated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost forgot it was monday, whoops,
> 
> also, might change the chapter name later, I haven't thought up a real winner yet
> 
> edit (12/9): changing the chapter name from 'in which Gen and Shaw Make Progress (finally)' to in which Gen Takes a Big Risk and Skye Decides Reality is Overrated  
> Also! we're kinda coming up on the end of things here, and I want to make sure I get it right and how I like it, over making sure I have a nice length chapter perfectly on schedule, so my updates from here might get a lil funky depending on both when I have time and if I'm happy with what I've got. (don't worry, the next chapter is definitely not the last or anything, I just want to make sure I tie up all these loose ends the way they should be, and not in a rush)

Gen shoved her laptop off her lap, sighing. There were so many files to read through, and she was running out of patience. And the ability to stay awake. She’d tried to run a quick find function for any mention of Skye or the project number SC44 in every kind of permutation she could come up with, but it hadn’t found _anything_. So she and Shaw were now looking through each one quickly to double check that there was nothing the search function could have missed. It was hard to find something when you didn’t even know what you were looking for.

“Finished already?” Shaw asked dryly, clearly knowing full well Gen wasn’t done yet.

“There’s just... so many,” Gen replied, laying back on the bed she was sitting on. “And I’m tired.”

“They’re not going to read themselves,” Shaw told her, already getting back to reading whatever one she had open on Skye’s laptop.

Gen could admire Shaw’s persistence, but she couldn’t imitate it. At least not right then. There were so many useless files in what they’d picked up; receipts for office supplies, item transfers and package deliveries. And those were just in the half Gen was supposed to be reading. She didn’t envy the amount of useless memos Shaw probably had to go through.

The keycard reader on the door clicked, like someone was coming in, and in that moment Shaw was off the bed and ready with her gun as the door swung open.

“Aww, did you miss me, sweetie?” Root asked, sounding absolutely delighted despite the gun pointed at her.

Shaw shook her head exasperatedly, putting the gun back on the counter by the TV. Root sauntered in like she owned the place, keeping at least one hand on Shaw as she looked around. Shaw had sprung for a nice hotel at least, probably because she either thought Gen couldn’t handle a cheap motel or was nice enough to treat her. Or, in reality, Shaw probably was just using her as an excuse to sleep in luxury for the next few nights.

“So, did you two find anything good in what you stole?” Root asked, looking at Shaw specifically.

Gen didn’t bother to respond, turning to lay on her side so she could look at her laptop again.

“Not yet,” Shaw told Root.

“Ooh, then you might have to pay me for this,” Root replied, Shaw’s bed making noise like one of them had hopped on, and then joined by the other by the sound of it.

“Just tell us whatever you figured out,” Shaw said, and Gen glanced back at the two of them.

Shaw was laying behind Root and practically spooning her, while Root was looking at Skye’s laptop. And started typing, to Gen’s acute embarrassment. Had she pulled up the code? What was she doing?

“What’re you doing?” Shaw asked, shifting to look over Root’s shoulder. Gen was almost relieved to hear the question.

“Refining your search a bit.”

“I thought you had something to tell us,” Shaw said, laying back down so her head was behind Root again.

“I do. But you two have a piece of the puzzle too.” Root frowned at the laptop, apparently not liking what she was seeing. “Or not...?”

“Just say your piece,” Shaw said, sounding resigned.

“They’re trying to recreate Samaritan,” Root told them simply. “I, being the brilliant software engineer I am, was hired to work on it.”

“I thought we cleaned up all of Samaritan’s messes,” Shaw said, moving away from Root to sit up on the bed.

“We did. But there were a few things they got to before us. Most of them should be wrecked right about now... but if they’re planning to manipulate Skye into the base of a new ASI to try and recreate something like the Samaritan system, you guys probably want to hurry up and find her.”

Shaw was silent, thinking about the implications of Root’s news probably. But Gen couldn’t stand the quiet.

“What... what other reasons could they have for wanting Skye?” she asked, pushing herself to sit on the edge of the bed closest to Root and Shaw.

“Well, before, she was the perfect—almost perfect model of a fully integrated analogue interface to give an ASI a way to interact with the world on a more personal level. So they probably took her to make some blueprints of their own model.”

Gen almost didn’t want to ask the question. “Then why would she become the base of a new ASI?”

“Thanks to my job, she’s the closest thing to an AI they have left. So if they ignore the low hanging fruit of trying to copy her system, they’d have to start from the ground up for a new one.”

Gen hugged herself, not liking the sound of either of the options. At least Root wasn’t being rude to her anymore... But everything was just awful, wasn’t it.

“I think I need some air,” Gen finally said, getting off the bed and packing her laptop back into her bag.

“Where’re you headed,” Shaw asked.

“I dunno. Probably just the lobby. I still have homework to do on top of all this.”

“Text me if you actually leave the building,” Shaw said, already dragging Root towards herself. Gen decided to save Skye’s laptop before they could forget about it, grabbing it from the edge of the bed before picking up her backpack.

“Yeah.” She swung the backpack onto her shoulder and grabbed one of the room keys from the counter by the TV.

\---

Skye climbed off her bed, getting ready to do some stretches. Her memories were held in place, at least for now, so she got to work trying to keep her body minimally healthy at the least. And, as she did the routine she was so used to, she could glance over the file the Machine had left her the other day.

The complete technical file of SC44. She was supposed to know all this, but the way the Machine had spoken sounded like Skye didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she did.

Perhaps... she should be remaking her core code based on some of the things in the technical file. The reason why the Machine sent it to her in the first place would finally make sense then.

She sighed. She couldn’t stretch _and_ do this.

Laying down on the floor, she closed her eyes and mentally opened the file.

\---

Gen barely contained a groan at her homework. She’d managed to power through her PreCalc, but just reading the assignment for Psych was enough to ruin her momentum. At least with math she could convince herself she was practicing the method of how to solve the type of problem they were working on that week, but writing a short essay on a psychological response she’d just had to read about in the textbook just felt like busywork. Maybe... she’d just selectively forget about that assignment, use grief as an excuse or something.

Except she knew she’d never do it later... Grumpily, she stared out the window in front of her. At least she’d grabbed a table by a window; it was pretty much dark out, but that never meant anything to the city. The streets around the hotel were all fairly well lit, though the foot traffic wasn’t anything like the busier parts of the city.

Gen watched the people go by, letting her mind drift. At the beginning of the semester, she’d sort of missed Skye. But it had mostly been that she missed having a roommate that hardly seemed like she was there when they did have to both be in the room at the same time.When the weather started to change, and she had started to miss doing Skye’s hair. Or at least, wanted Skye’s hair. Her own hair could get painfully frizzy and curly if she didn’t take the right steps to brush it out and tie it up while it was wet. Skye’s hair, while it had seemed curly when Gen had first met her, was wavy at most now, and was so easy to run a brush through. At least, unless Skye had been wrestling with Bear.

And then Skye had come, and it had seemed almost like it was over the summer again, and Gen hadn’t realized how much she would miss that now. Except maybe the fact they’d had to be in such close quarters for so much of the day; she did not want to repeat living with two other people in a room barely meant for one.  Skye had seemed ready to burst being stuck in that room.

But... To curl up with her in bed, to know she was safe and warm...

Gen started packing up her textbooks. She wasn’t going to get anything done like this, and she definitely didn’t have the motivation to snap out of it.

At least Shaw got Root, not that she really needed any sort of emotional comfort. Gen didn’t even have Robin.

But she could.

She pulled out her phone, opening the text chain with the Machine. But before she could even start typing, a text appeared.

_Earpiece, front pouch_.

Front pouch of what? Gen stuck her hand in her backpack, hoping that was what the Machine had meant.

Her fingers found something she didn’t remember putting in her bag, so she pulled it out, and found a little plastic case holding what looked to be wireless earbuds.

“Neat, but why?” she muttered in the vague direction of the phone, pulling the earpieces out to connect it to her phone.

_Use it_.

As soon as they were connected, a call from a familiar number popped up, and Gen answered it.

“Did you really not see the file?” Skye’s voice asked, sounding a twinge disappointed.

“Which file?” Gen asked, deciding she didn’t like that tone in Skye’s voice. Skye had never used it on her before. “I saw thousands of files.”

It sounded like Skye sighed.

“Come on, it’s not like you told me what I was even supposed to be looking for.”

“I had hoped you would catch it—”

“Look, I’m tired, I have schoolwork to catch up on. I’m not like Shaw—or Root, I guess. I’m not trained for this stuff. But I’m doing my best, okay?”

The Machine was quiet a moment. “You still wish to find Skye?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I cannot give you all the answers. But I can give you a proper nudge in the right direction. For Skye.”

Gen’s phone lit up with a new message, and she opened it up.  The Machine had given her what she could only assume was a file name, so she opened her computer back up and searched it.

The file popped up immediately, and all it was... was a delivery report? Gen had seen it, and hadn’t picked up anything suspicious about it.

Delivery of equipment for one of their labs, listed as various smaller items like specific computer chips, batteries, and... wire maybe?

“There wouldn’t be a paper trail for Skye,” the Machine told her. “So look for other things they might need for her.”

“How would I be supposed to know she needed this stuff?”

“Look a little closer.”

Gen did, reading over the list of items. It seemed like basic stuff or words she didn’t actually know the definition of, but then again, she wasn’t an engineer in any way, shape, or form. She felt a little stupid, trying to glean some sort of meaning from these words that hadn’t made sense to her before.

“Did you see,” the Machine asked, perfectly patient, “they got sloppy. Four small Lithium batteries, a few pressure sensors, a single roll of 24 gauge and smaller wire, and only one microchip? Those aren’t for industrial use. They’re trying to repair something intricate and complicated.”

“The arm?” Gen asked, a little excited she finally got what the Machine was pointing out to her.

“Skye’s arm,” the Machine confirmed.

Hurriedly inputting the address of the delivery into her phone, Gen packed up all her stuff back into her backpack. May as well start scouting now.

“Don’t forget to let Primary Asset Shaw know you’re leaving the building,” the Machine told her. “Not that she’ll see it for a bit.”

\---

Skye could taste the blood coming from her nose as she ran her tongue over her lips, and without hesitation, she jumped onto the table her prosthetic arm was laying on, all the cover panels pulled off. It wouldn’t be as useful as a weapon like that, the delicate bits exposed, but she needed another hand.

Behind her lay two guards and a scientist, and they’d done a good job trying to keep her from the arm. But not a great job, since they were the ones on the floor.

The compromised systems due to the drugs were starting to get smaller and smaller, meaning she could go back to using the parts of her brain that were used to handling her usual processes. That would let her allocate the space she was using now back to the bigger picture.

The arm had plenty of power at least, the fool of a scientist charging it as he had worked on it; she attached it without problem, smiling at the feeling of it clicking into place.

The door opened as she stared at her mechanical fingers moving under her power, and she leaped off the table to grab one of the guards’ guns and shoot the movement at the door.

She got the guy in the shoulder, and he seemed confused that she’d shot him. She didn’t have time to make him feel better, getting up and going to the still half open door.

The hall was clear still; whoever his partner was, they were slacking.

At a rather leisurely pace for someone technically escaping, Skye made her way down the hall towards what she hoped was Brighton’s office. She was rather invincible, all the guards told to keep her alive. She had to follow no such rule, and she had no intention of doing so if it came down to her or the guard.

Footsteps behind her made her turn, and she lifted the gun in warning at the group of guards. None of them even hesitated, so she opened fire; Shaw had told her long ago to always aim for center of mass until she was confident of her shot accuracy.

For a second, it seemed like the trigger didn’t respond, and then she fired two shots in both of the first to approach, right in the center of their mass, and she clipped the third’s arm as he dove for cover behind one of the various carts in the hallway. Skye could’ve almost believed it was a hospital if the carts had a few more medical instruments on them instead of just tools.

He fired a warning shot in her general direction, a gutsy move considering Skye knew he would be killed if she was, and it ricocheted by the sound of it, making Skye duck. He was an idiot, risking his own life in an attempt to keep her from shooting.

She took aim at him, his cover rather wimpy, but he fired another shot just as she was about to take hers, and hers went wide.

“Hey,” Gen’s voice said from behind her.

Skye immediately whirled around, shooting at the motion before thinking. The gun clicked, empty, and there was no one actually there.

Confused, and a little suspicious, Skye threw the gun at the spot she had definitely thought she’d seen someone in the corner of her eye. It arced nicely until the very second it should have hit the person she’d thought was there, when it... For half a second, it hesitated in midair, like a bad graphics glitch, before continuing on its path with very very slight disjointed sound.

Skye shook her head, trying to clear it after seeing that. Something was definitely wrong.

There was a pinch of a needle in her arm, but still, no one around; she didn’t like this at all. Tired of letting this happen to her, she broke into a run, looking for the next turn off of the hallway to find anywhere else to be.

Everything in her head was starting to feel strange again, so she slowed to a walk as she ran her prosthetic fingers over the inside of her elbow, where the pinch had been. Why did she feel like she had been re-dosed?

Skye shook her head again. Something _had_ to be wrong with how she was reading her sensors. She started up a diagnostic, coming to a stop in the hallway. No one was around anymore, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have the time.

“I told you, she’s rejecting it.”

Skye turned, trying to find the source of the voice she knew was right beside her.

Again, nothing.

Skye turned and ran, trying to find some usable part of her processors. The diagnostic was telling everything was fine, but it felt like everything was getting infected with something to trick her senses, give her false readings.

Skidding to a stop and falling backwards just before the sudden precipice, Skye stared in astonishment at how the floor seemed to drop away into a void.

And as she followed the trail the diagnostic had taken, diving through the fog around the infected systems in her head, she was led right back to her arm, to the very second she’d attached it to the shoulder piece.

Every single sensor her body had started giving slightly different readings at that point, like they’d been soft reset.

Hurriedly, she ejected the arm, grabbing it just above the elbow and throwing it at the impossible hole before turning back the way she’d come. The arm made a clatter as it hit the floor, whatever connection it had opened now shut down with the its disconnection, and Skye stared at the scientist she’d knocked out to get her arm, as well as Johnson and a nurse with an empty syringe.

“I-I lost it,” the scientist said nervously, hiding behind his laptop and backing away from Skye to get behind Johnson. “Without the arm’s connection...”

“Welcome back, Skye,” Johnson said, ignoring the man. “You didn’t actually think we would leave that arm out for you to take so easily?”

“You haven’t proven you’re smarter than that yet,” she replied.

Johnson sighed, annoyed, and then gestured to the scientist. “Wipe her memory of the whole event. This better be good enough for your beta test.”

“Um, I can’t... I mean, yes, it’s plenty,” he replied, closing the computer and going to get Skye’s arm from the floor behind her. He seemed to forget to try and avoid Skye as she stared at Johnson, easily picking up the arm and not even backing away from her.

She lunged at him, slapping the arm right out of his hold and crouching down over it to find the wires she’d done so well to hide in the upper arm and rip them out of their carefully soldered connections. If it couldn’t connect to her shoulder, she couldn’t be compromised again, and he wouldn’t be able to get in her head again.

Something hit her hard in the back of the head, and she toppled over immediately, eyes closing as everything shut down.

\---

The building was nondescript, Gen probably couldn’t have picked it out of a lineup of suspicious looking buildings. Of course, logically, the building couldn’t look particularly out of place, but still it managed to surprise her. It just looked like one of the older business buildings where the windows weren’t very large.

She also knew, logically, she shouldn’t try anything, especially at this time of night. But to be so close to Skye yet so far away was making her antsy. They’d get her out of there, soon. She just had to hold on a little longer.

Gen pulled her phone out of her pocket, starting to take as many pictures of the front of the building as possible without seeming obvious about it. She really didn’t look like she should be out and about right then, especially being far from any sort of library or college campus to have an excuse for her backpack and junky clothes.

One of the guards inside was definitely eyeing her as she tried to walk by as nondescriptly as she could.

Belatedly, she realized, of course they would know what she looked like; she was supposed to be back at school, doing nothing about Skye’s disappearance.

She might’ve just ruined the whole endeavor if they recognized her.

Playing the typical teenager card, Gen started pulling any app up on her phone, pretending to get into some texts and keep her head down and face away from the front doors of the building. At least she had her hood up already to ward off the cold.

_May have messed up slightly,_ Gen texted Shaw, starting to pick up her pace to head back to the hotel. She couldn’t decide yet if she would be lucky or unlucky if Shaw was awake to read the messages. _But I found the place. Got some pics._

No response right away, which was good. Maybe. At least if she wasn’t being followed.

 

\---

“I don’t want her going back there with a number there,” Root said decisively. “The less people who know about her the better.” They were standing in a park, just out of sight of any of the security cameras. Skye liked this memory, or at least, the birds.

“Where else are we gonna take her, Root,” Shaw asked, holding Skye’s plush cat and the empty sleeve of the onesie Skye was wearing as Skye tried to figure out how to eat the popsicle they got her; it was very cold, making it hard to bite, but it tasted so good.

“Easy, take her down to the—”

“I’m not going to lead Samaritan right to the Machine,” Shaw interrupted. “I didn’t get this far taking risks like that.”

“If they’d put a tracker on her, wouldn’t they have collected her by now?”

“Not if they think there’s a chance to find the Machine.” Skye crouched down for better balance while attacking the popsicle, making Shaw glance at her. “They followed her before because they thought they could collect her right away, but by now they must know we have her.”

Root didn’t reply.

“The number’s just gonna think she’s a kid,” Shaw told Root, voice a little quieter. “And it’s not like we’re going to leave her alone with them.”

Root stepped in, closer to Shaw, and tucked some of the flyaway hair escaping from her ponytail back behind her ear before leaning in a little closer.

Skye, with some crinkling of the wrapper protecting her hand, held the finished popsicle stick proudly up to them. Her mouth is stained orange from it, as revealed from her grin.

Root looked surprised, like Skye interrupted her from something important. Pulling the popsicle stick back, Skye glanced between them, trying to figure out what she did wrong.

“Nice job, kid,” Shaw said. “Trash can’s over there.”

Skye stared at her, taking a second to realize she wasn’t, in fact, in trouble, as Shaw let go of her sleeve.

Finished with her task, Skye turned to go back to Shaw and Root, and was immediately distracted by the amount of pigeons by the bench. Slowly, she stepped forwards, trying to get a closer look, but the birds all shifted away from her to keep the same distance.

“Hello, dear,” an older man said to Skye, sitting on the bench. It looked like he was feeding the birds, being the source of the seeds on the pavement that attracted all the pigeons. “That’s quite the outfit.”

Skye stared at him, trying to read him for any loyalty to Samaritan.

“Don’t wander too far from your moms,” he said kindly, gesturing to Shaw and Root, who either didn’t notice that Skye wasn’t back yet or didn’t care that she was wandering.

Skye nodded, not entirely sure that ‘moms’ defined what Root and Shaw were to her, but also uninterested in correcting the old man. Instead, she returned her attention to the birds, trying to sneak closer again.

“It helps if you have some food,” the old man told her. “Would you like to borrow some seeds?”

Skye nodded again.

“Alright, hold both your hands out,” he says, pulling the bag up onto his lap and unrolling the top.

Skye held out her one hand, and the old man hesitated, belatedly realizing the one sleeve was empty before smiling at her kindheartedly. He put some of the seeds into her palm before grabbing some for himself.

“It’s very simple, you just drop them in front of yourself, and voilà, the pigeons come,” he said, demonstrating.

Skye imitated him, dropping the seeds in front of her, and sure enough some of the birds came closer to her, interested in the food. She squatted down, looking at how the feathers reflected the sunlight and changed color as the birds moved and ate.

“They are quite pretty, aren’t they,” the old man said, smiling at the birds.

Skye nodded vigorously, reaching out to see if she could touch one of them. They all dodged her hand however, and she didn’t want to hurt any of them, so she gave up quickly.

Before she could stand back up, some force scooped her right off the ground and shocked her startled cry silent.

“Sweetie, what did I say about talking to strangers,” Root said, sounding stern as she got Skye onto her hip. “I’m so sorry she was bothering you, sir.”

“Oh, she was no bother,” the old man said kindly as he smiled at Skye, who was beyond confused. Root had told her she was too big to pick up earlier when she’d asked to be carried because her legs hurt. “She just wanted to see the birds.”

Root, while trying to pull Skye’s hood down over her face despite Skye’s bewilderment, smiled relievedly at the old man. “Oh, that’s good to hear. I’d let you stay and watch the birds, honey, but if we don’t go now we’re going to be late,” she said, looking at Skye for the last part. “Sorry for the trouble, sir.”

Skye waved at him over Root’s shoulder as she turned away, walking purposefully away and catching up with Shaw.

“Why’re we late,” Skye mumbled, holding onto Root’s jacket tight as she bumped around. Root didn’t walk as smooth as Shaw.

“Hm? I didn’t hear you, sweetie,” Root said, using one hand to keep Skye’s head against her shoulder.

“Late?” Skye managed to ask a little louder, pushing back on Root’s hand to speak next to her ear.

“Oh, we’re not late to anything. Why?”

“Said we’re late,” Skye mumbled, perplexed.

“What, to the old man? I just needed an excuse to leave,” Root said, stopping.

Skye tried to look around to see why she stopped, but Root pushed her head back down against her shoulder. She could hear Shaw talking, but the sound of the street muffled her as she was on the other side of Root’s head.

“Don’t look, sweetie, I don’t want you to get recognized. Samaritan almost had you at the park there; just pretend to be asleep.”

“’M not tired,” Skye replied, but she complied, not able to do much else with Root holding her head.

“Want m’ cat,” Skye told her when she started walking again and her hold wasn’t so tight.

“Sam,” Root said, slowing down. “The cat please.”

Skye’s world got to briefly widen back out, Root letting go of her head and letting her look around, and Shaw handed her the cat, Skye having to let go of Root’s shoulder to grab it.

But then Root’s hand was back, holding her down and practically knocking her head into her bony shoulder. She started to squirm in Root’s hold, trying to escape it somehow, and Root effectively dropped her onto the sidewalk.

She landed on her feet, mostly, and she turned around, only to find Root in front of her again, and the entire memory warped in a way that was definitely not under her control.

“Ugh, you’re useless like this,” Root had said, turning to peek around the corner of the hallway. Gunshots punctuated her hasty retreat, and she muttered a few other choice words under her breath as she checked how many bullets she had left.

Skye could remember at the time, she hadn’t understood what Root had meant. They’d been in a shootout to get away from the agents sent to pick Skye up, and Skye knew she wasn’t that useful. But now, she understood exactly what Root had meant. And now it annoyed her.

She tried to open her mouth, tell Root she wasn’t her Machine, and her world distorted yet again. She borrowed some of Root’s choice words as she tried to pull out of the memories all together, immediately recognizing the next one.

She had fixed her memories, storing them all in the correct place now. Mostly. She had left the divider between the newer and older memories, but that clearly didn’t make a difference to what memories they picked.

“It’s fine,” Lambert said, “she doesn’t comprehend death yet.”

Skye screamed in defiance to seeing Joanna like that again, willing to rip pieces of her mind apart to find the command that was keeping her here. Just unclamping the arm didn’t work anymore, since she was doing that over and over to try and get rid of whoever was in control of prying into her memories.

“Reset her,” Johnson’s voice said, and Skye felt like she was thrown back into her body, gasping as she took in her cell. Johnson was standing at the foot of her bed, watching the scientist guy with the laptop on her right.

Putting the laptop down, he leaned over her and then seemed surprised to see her awake and glaring at him.

“I’m... Not supposed to kill people,” she said breathlessly. “Against one of my very first rules. But I’d kill you in a heartbeat.” Her good hand was tied to the bed again, the only thing keeping her from just grabbing him right then.

The scientist guy looked properly intimidated, and Skye almost grinned if she wasn’t so furious. She’d never been this angry, not even when she had been a child and the scientists and doctors had been so mean to her. But this was another level of frustrating, and Skye was definitely ready to break some rules if it meant she could leave this hellhole.

He looked nervous, but scientist guy still leaned over her to try and take her prosthetic arm back. Skye re-clamped the arm in place, able to find his commands and override them when she wasn’t being pushed into her memories.

Really, it was his mistake leaning over her like that. Lunging for him, she grabbed his throat with her metal hand, pushing him backwards as she choked him.

“Doing all this to me isn’t going to make me help you,” Skye told Johnson, ignoring the scientist as he gagged. She couldn’t really feel if he was trying to pull her fingers off or not, though the current draw on the motors for her fingers did get little fluctuations like he was.

“We don’t need your help anymore,” Johnson told her. “Anything we had left of Samaritan was destroyed by a suspiciously incompetent employee.”

Skye stared at him in surprise, almost dropping scientist guy.

Johnson smiled at her wolfishly. “That’s right, we don’t need your help anymore. We just need your system. We need to know what makes you tick, and we know you must have a copy of your complete technical file. So if we dig deep enough into your memories, we’re bound to find something of use.

“Now let go of him, and behave,” Johnson continued, coming around to the left side of the bed, the opposite side of scientist guy.

He put his hands on her metal shoulder, and she watched in complete astonishment as he ripped a single wire out of the arm, and the whole thing fell out of the clamp and released scientist guy, who collapsed as he tried to breathe.

They’d modified her arm?

Beyond furious, Skye yelled wordlessly as she brought her knee up and slammed her foot into Johnson’s face. She would kill him first.

 

“Report,” Brighton said as Johnson stood in front of her desk. He looked rather worse for wear, his nose with a bandage over it like someone had hit him across the face. But he was alive and able to talk, that was all she needed.

“She’s frustrated and confused,” he told her. “Carl says her code is drastically changing daily, making it difficult for him to find memories where she felt humiliation or anger, but—”

“That’s exactly where we want her,” Brighton said.

“Precisely.”


	13. in which the Skye Opens Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry my dudes, i finished this technically,,,, before the new year i think? but i didn't have time to properly proofread and go over it until the beginning of this month and then i got slammed with work and completely forgot i had it finished,
> 
> hopefully as soon as i get a bit more time i can finish working on the next chapters,

Gen opened the hotel room door as quiet as she could; Shaw hadn’t responded to her texts, and she’d managed to shake the tail on the subway, so she was okay. Maybe she could just delete the texts off of Shaw’s phone.

Except, there was only one, too tall figure in Shaw’s bed: Root. And the bathroom was dark.

Hurriedly, Gen glanced around the dim room, trying to figure out if Shaw was going to jump her for sneaking out. Maybe she should have told her when she’d left the building. She was going to be in _so much_ trouble.

“In my experience,” Root drawled from where she was laying, “if you hurry up and pretend to be asleep, she won’t get you ‘til the morning.”

Gen almost threw her backpack she was so startled to hear Root speak, but thankfully, it was too heavy for her to get it very far out of her hold. “Bold of you to assume she wouldn’t just wake me up,” Gen replied, gingerly putting the backpack down by the bed before kneeling down next to it to dig her phone charger out. “We can’t all be her girlfriend, or whatever you are.”

“Mm, it’s your ass on the line,” Root replied indifferently, sounding like she was turning over from how the blankets were making noise.

“Where is Shaw, anyways?” Gen asked as she plugged her phone in to charge, belatedly wondering if Root had gone back to sleep.

“Right on your heels,” Root replied, sounding half asleep.

That was enough for Gen, spurring her into pulling off any clothing that couldn’t qualify as pajamas and diving under the covers of her own bed. She could at least try Root’s method; if it didn’t work, at least she was already awake.

\---

Skye sighed, closing her eyes as Gen ran her hands through her hair. She would stay here, with her. In the little apartment where they had to share a room, with Robin purring on the covers beside them.

Skye flinched as a shard of noise broke through her carefully crafted walls, and the next moment she could comprehend, she was struggling to breathe as she laid on the bed with Robin, feeling the cat’s soft head as she purred.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Gen said softly. Her voice sounded just slightly off, like without the amount of processes she would want to use everything was slightly murky. But the feeling of Gen’s hand against her back seemed real enough.

“It hurts so much,” Skye told her, barely able to get the words out. “How does she do this every day? Every moment...”

Gen rubbed her back, and Skye tried to relax into it around the feeling of being tugged away from this place.

“Don’t leave,” Skye mumbled as Gen laid down beside her.

She closed her eyes again, only to be yanked out of her hiding place and forced back into a sensory overload. The whole facility, in her head; it was more sound than sight, garbled messes of everything happening in the facility right then played on top of each other at what felt like full volume to her mind.

They were trying to keep her there, to keep testing, but she was _burning_.

As soon as the tug wasn’t restricting her, she retreated again, desperate for the quiet of her and Gen’s room and the gentle pressure of Gen doing her hair.

“It’ll be okay,” Gen told her, running her hands through her hair. Her touch, however imaginary, felt like it was easing the pounding in her head.

There were all too real tears on her cheeks.

\---

“We gotta talk,” Shaw said flatly, grabbing the back of Gen’s sweatshirt before Gen could sneak out the door and down to breakfast.

Clearing her throat, Gen turned around and tried to smile as innocently as possible at Shaw. “Okay.” Root was still in her bed, either acting like she was asleep or actually a deep enough sleeper to not wake up to this.

“Don’t look at me like that; I’m not going to hit you,” Shaw said dryly. “I just want to know if you remember what I said last night when you went to work on homework.”

“Er, to text you if I left the building.”

“And what’d you do when you left the building?”

“Uh... Did it not send?” Gen tried.

Almost knocking Gen over in surprise, Shaw hit her arm with a rather loose fist. She knew Shaw could have done much worse to her; she probably wouldn’t even bruise from the weak punch.

“Hey, you said you weren’t gonna hit me!”

“What, you can lie but I don’t get to?” Shaw replied.

“Okay, okay, I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t pan out,” Gen said, rubbing her arm. “But when I found the place, it seemed like they recognized me, so I kinda... panicked...”

“You bet your ass they recognized you,” Shaw said, crossing her arms. She went over to the singular chair in the room, sitting down and putting her feet up on her and Root’s bed. “You’re lucky I asked John to keep an eye on your roommate before we left.”

Gen froze. “She’s, okay, right?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Like I said, John was there to sort everything out,” Shaw told her. “You know, you actually didn’t do terrible; you did figure out where we’re headed. But you’re gonna have to think a bit more before running off next time. I’m not always going to be there to dispatch hired muscle in the subway.

“Go get breakfast or whatever. We’ll figure out what we’re doing after we all get up.” She kicked at the lump under the covers, making Root flinch and grab more of the blankets to cover herself with.

Gen took the out, hurrying out the door before Shaw changed her mind.

 

“Alright, kid,” Shaw said, sitting down across from Gen at the table in the hotel lobby. “Looks like you’re cookin’ something up.”

Gen looked up at her, tearing her attention away from the papers in front of her. “Where’s Root?” she asked, glancing around the room.

“Conference call with her boss,” Shaw replied, taking some of the fruit Gen had left on her plate. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, we know where she is, roughly, so as soon as we can get some plans for the building, which I’m also trying to do—” Gen pointed at the open laptop in front of her with the back of her pencil. “—and then if we can just, grab her and get out, we’re good right?”

The barest hint of a smile started to pull at Shaw’s lips, either from what Gen said or from the quality of the food. Gen wasn’t sure, but she hoped it was because of what she was saying.

“You’re a smart kid. Maybe I’ll keep you around,” Shaw said before sitting up straight and pulling the laptop around to glance at the screen.

“Thanks,” Gen replied dryly. “But I’d rather you helped me figure this all out so I could get back to regular life.”

“Fine,” Shaw said with a slight mock sigh, already busy looking over what Gen had started to come up with.

\---

Skye stared at the ceiling of her empty room, focusing on each count to seven for a breath as she tried to stabilize her brain. The room still looked like it was spinning slightly, and she desperately wanted it to stop.

But not before her stomach had to heave again. Thankfully, the toilet was just where she left it: right between her legs as she sat up.

Whatever they’d done to her to run the tests as something to the Machine’s caliber was messing up her entire body, especially now that it was time they had started doing it yesterday, and there was no sign of anything like it happening yet today.

The door to her cell opened, she could hear it, but all she had the energy to do was lay back down as her stomach relaxed.

It was the nurse that kept coming back, even though Skye knew she’d used her to escape multiple times by now. All the other nurses were always one and done. The lady was looking down at her as she laid there, and then knelt down and gently felt Skye’s forehead with a wonderfully cool hand.

Skye unthinkingly closed her eyes, too tired to even figure out if this was some kind of trick.

“Do you want to go back to bed?” she asked, her voice as soft as her hand.

Skye shook her head, and then immediately regretted it; her headache did not like movement. But the message got across.

The nurse got up and left, and Skye listened to her footsteps retreat. Suddenly the floor seemed so cold.

And then return.

“Can you sit up?”

Skye opened her eyes, looking up at the woman, who was holding a blanket from the bed. Using the toilet to hold onto, Skye pulled herself up as far as she could, and the woman knelt down and wrapped the blanket around her before helping her lay back down.

“I’ll come back in a bit, if you want to get back in bed and need help.”

Skye nodded in acknowledgement pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders as a shiver wormed its way through her.

 

_To grow from who you were, into who you are._ The Machine’s words still echoed in her head sometimes, the conversation by the lake at Gen’s school still worth turning over and over in her mind.

Skye glanced at the nurse sitting beside the bed again, the same woman from earlier sitting there reading a little soft cover book with one hand as she held Skye’s hand with her other. It wasn’t unusual for a nurse to be in the room if Skye was doing badly, but... to hold her hand as well?

Who did this nurse think Skye was? Clearly the threats Skye had made on her life in the past had no effect.

At the very least, this woman thought Skye was worth the comfort of holding her hand as her body ached and trembled and rejected any of her attempts to relax. Her internal clock said it wasn’t even noon yet, but it felt like forever since this morning, when she’d been tethered to the toilet by her stomach’s decision to empty itself every few minutes.

At least being forced to rest gave her the time to go through her jumbled mind and mend everything they’d ripped apart when they’d used her to watch everything in the facility. Just as she had before, she used the technical file as her template to put everything back to how it should be.

Every time, it felt like starting over, but at least she was learning.

 

_To grow from who you were, into who you are._

Who did the Machine think she was? Clearly the Machine had a clear idea of who Skye was. And while Skye could see a clear differences in herself when the Machine both gave and revoked her power, she wasn’t sure which version of herself was the correct one, the one that defined her.

Maybe she was supposed to pick, and the Machine just predicted which one she would decide on. It wouldn’t be hard for the Machine; Skye’s past selves were rather stupid—

Someone grabbed the back of her shirt; she hadn’t been paying proper attention to the hallways around her in the least.

Maybe this version of herself was the stupidest.

“Where are you going?” Johnson asked, turning Skye around rather like a kitten held by the scruff of her neck. Sometimes it absolutely sucked to be short.

Skye looked up at him, scrutinizing him. Maybe she was stupid, but at least she was going to learn quick. “I dunno, I felt like taking a stroll,” Skye told him truthfully, just before slamming her foot into his lower stomach. It worked every time.

It took her a second longer than normal to regain her balance from his hand slipping off the back of her shirt, but she still had enough time to turn and continue down the hallway.

Something hit her solidly in the middle of her back, and she toppled forwards, just barely catching herself before her head hit the ground. Scrambling to get onto her back to see what had happened, apparently Johnson’s reach was longer than she’d given him credit for. She decided to blame the fact she was still struggling with her body from earlier rather than the fact Johnson was actually that good.

He pulled her up by the front of her shirt, to her indignation, and she slapped him across the face as soon as she was as close to on her feet as she could be.

Who was she supposed to be? Clearly, she didn’t really know anymore. But she did know she’d spend every second she could sending Johnson towards the ground.

 

She hissed as the nurse from earlier applied the alcohol to the cut over her eyebrow, the sting too much and too close to her eye for her to stay silent like usual.

“Do you ever consider this part of picking an unwinnable fight?” the nurse asked, applying the little bandage to the now clean cut. Interestingly enough, this nurse was much more talkative now that Johnson had left the room.

“Why?”

“You would think the thought of having to deal with all your injuries after the fight might act as a deterrent.”

Skye stayed silent, barely keeping herself from wincing as the nurse delicately cleaned out her split lip. Moving would just make it worse. Thankfully she was laying back on the hospital bed in her room, because she would have been trembling otherwise.

In truth, Skye never thought of the future. Just the present and the very next step to whatever she was doing. It was all that she had ever needed in the past. But maybe that’s why none of her escape attempts ever worked, both here and as a child in the Samaritan facility.

_To grow from who you were, into who you are._

“Are you cold again?” the nurse asked when Skye started to pull the blankets on the bed higher.

Skye shrugged, bringing her knees up to her chest under the blanket. The nurse leaned forwards and gently felt for Skye’s pulse on her neck, Skye still using her arm to arrange the blankets better.

“Mn, I told them the withdrawal would hit harder than it was worth to use them,” she said, shaking her head. She helped Skye with the blankets, tucking her in more securely.

Watching the woman, Skye decided who she wanted to be.

“What’s your name,” Skye asked, scooting down on the bed so her mouth was almost covered by the blankets.

The nurse looked surprised for a moment. “Ariel.”

“Thanks for taking care of me, Ariel,” Skye said, letting her eyes close as she tried to relax into the bed.

\---

Skye sat down on the floor of the shower stall; there was a camera that gave them visibility of the bathroom connected to her cell, but it was low enough quality that if she didn’t make this look suspicious, they wouldn’t be able to stop her in time.

She pulled the cover off her shoulder prosthetic, revealing the clamp that held it against her body. The chip that connected her arm to her brain was in there, along with whatever they’d implanted to open the connection as if she had an arm there.

Carefully, she loosened the end of the clamp, allowing her to turn the part that either released or dug the claws deeper into what was left of her shoulder. She’d used a modified wheel pull design to attach it and keep it tight to her shoulder, and it had held up incredibly well over the year.

Her hand wasn’t shaking as she ran her fingers over the piece to turn. Gen’s might’ve in the same position, but Skye just didn’t have that capacity right then. If she got scared, she wouldn’t be able to do this, and therefore wouldn’t be able to escape.

So, determinedly, she twisted the piece that controlled the claws, and ruined all the healing her shoulder had done after attaching it in the first place.

She couldn’t scream, that would definitely alert them to something being wrong right away. But it hurt so bad she could feel tears on her cheeks as she gasped.

Her hand was shaking by the time she pulled the piece of bloody metal away from her shoulder; her whole body was shaking from the exertion, but she wasn’t done yet. Putting the hunk of metal on the floor of the shower stall, she held it down with one foot as she dug the chip out of its hiding place in the part that held against her shoulder. This was the chip they couldn’t replace, the chip with the code that unlocked the door into her head.

She put it on the floor beside her, just as she heard the door to her room slammed against. Good thing she’d barricaded it. Spite her only fuel left, she used the cover she’d pulled off earlier to smash the little thing to as many pieces as she could before she ran out of energy.

She was going to make a new one when she got out. An unhackable one. She wasn’t sure how yet, but she would find a way.

 

“She broke the arm,” Johnson told her, looking too confident for this to be bad news.

“And...?” Lisa prompted.

“Carl says we have enough recorded attempts testing with her that we could make a copy of her AI; it would practically replace everything we lost.”

“Do it.” She barely even looked up at him, continuing to go through the papers on her desk.

“And our guest?” Johnson asked.

“Find a way to fix whatever she did; I—we’re not done with her until she’s dead.”

 

Joanna looked down at her as she laid on the hospital bed, her expression hard and cold. It took a second for Skye to re-identify the woman as Lisa Brighton, making the scene in front of her make sense. She’d never been held in such a large room when she was small.

“Are you with us, Skye?” Brighton asked, leaning over her.

Skye tried to grab her, only to find her arm restrained as per usual now when someone important was in the room. It was probably for the best; the withdrawal symptoms were still fairly strong, so anything she did would probably not work out very well.

“You could be free of this, of all this,” Brighton said, her voice bordering  on kind. “Just say the word.”

Sighing, Skye closed her eyes again. She was mercifully free of them jumbling everything up in her head now, but she still hadn’t finished cleaning up the garbage they’d left. She didn’t have time to play with Brighton.

“It’s a pity you weren’t made smarter,” Brighton said offhandedly, moving away from the bed.

“It’s a pity your sister’s death was a complete mistake,” Skye replied, her eyes still closed. Her irritation with them, as always, got the better of her.

“What?” Brighton grabbed Skye by the chin, forcing her head up, but Skye still didn’t open her eyes.

“Trust me,” Skye said, only slightly hindered by Brighton’s hold on her jaw, “I was there. I know exactly what happened.”

“You got her killed,” Brighton hissed. “Don’t try and dodge the responsibility.”

“Eliza Brooke,” Skye said, looking Lisa Brighton in the eye as she used her real name, “your sister died because she worked for an organization hell bent on controlling the world, and they didn’t care about the individual lives under their responsibility. She died because of one man’s faulty judgement; I will _not_ take the blame for something I had no control over.”

Brighton slapped her across the face harder than she expected; Skye could taste a bit of blood from her lip.

“Joanna Brooke died as a _mistake_ ,” Skye said again, sitting up to get closer to Brighton. “They killed her when they didn’t need to, and now you’re working for the same people. How long until they kill you too?

“The AI you hope to make won’t care about individuals. It’ll protect the herd, but at what cost? How long until you’re killed, for the good of the herd?”

Brighton backhanded her, hitting the other side of her face and sending Skye back to the pillows behind her.

“I... I want to honor her memory. Because that’s all we can do now. Remember,” Skye said towards the ceiling, speaking perfectly honestly for the first time around Brighton. “All we have left of her is our memories, and if we forget, she’ll truly be dead.”

“You think I’d forget about my own sister?”

“No. But you aren’t the only one who’s life she made a mark on,” Skye said, looking at her again as she got annoyed. “Don’t be a bitch because you got to be blood related to her. Joanna was _everything_ to me, and I had to watch her _die._ ”

“You’re the cause of her death,” Brighton said. “And don’t even think for a second if I’m done putting you through the pain I went through when she died.”

 “Don’t talk to me like you’re the only one who deserves to remember her,” Skye said, only for Brighton to turn and stalk off toward the door before Skye could say anything else. The lone nurse, Ariel, moved forwards as Brighton left, undoing the restraint before following Brighton out.

Skye flopped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling again. The Machine had planted the little piece of information about Brighton’s true identity in the very last pages of the technical file on SC44. After rereading through the whole thing, Skye wasn’t even sure she could consider herself SC44 anymore, not with everything she’d learned and become, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

She might not have understood it at the time, but Joanna had taught her one of the most important things she had ever grasped: how to be an individual. So no matter what Brighton did, Skye was never going to give Joanna up. And never accept the blame for being forced to watch her death.

\---

“Coward,” Skye said, pulling at the restraints on her arm.

Johnson didn’t reply, finishing setting up the computer connected to what looked like some kind of VR headset.

“I’m useless now, just get rid of me,” she tried, as he moved beside the bed with the headset in hand. She knew that could be nothing good; whatever they were attempting, it was going to replace what they had been doing to her mind with the aid of her prosthetic.

But still, he was focused on whatever his job was.

“If ASIs are your god,” Skye said, finally catching Johnson’s gaze, “I am your _messiah_. How deep into Hell do you want to go?”

“I’m already in it,” Johnson replied evenly, putting the headset over Skye’s face.


End file.
